On the other side of the street, opposite the Maitland house, was a
huddle of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and
seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud
of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder
to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky
flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and
children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland
Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black surface--or a soft,
black surface, when it rained. These little huddling houses called
themselves Maitland's Shantytown, and they looked up at the Big House,
standing in melancholy isolation behind its fence of iron spears, with
the pride that is common to us all when we find ourselves in the
company of our betters. Back of the little houses was a strip of waste
land, used for a dump; and beyond it, bristling against the sky, the
long line of Mercer's stacks and chimneys.
In spite of such surroundings, the Big House, even as late as the early
seventies, was impressive. It was square, with four great chimneys, and
long windows that ran from floor to ceiling. Its stately entrance and
its two curving flights of steps were of white marble, and so were the
lintels of the windows; but the stone was so stained and darkened with
smoky years of rains and river fogs, that its only beauty lay in the
noble lines that grime and time had not been able to destroy. A gnarled
and twisted old wistaria roped the doorway, and, crawling almost to the
roof, looped along the eaves, in May it broke into a froth of exquisite
purple and faint green, and for a week the garland of blossoms,
murmurous with bees, lay clean and lovely against the narrow, old
bricks which had once been painted yellow. Outside, the house had a
distinction which no superficial dilapidation could mar; but inside
distinction was almost lost in the commonplace, if not in actual
ugliness. The double parlors on the right of the wide hall had been
furnished in the complete vulgarity of the sixties; on the left was the
library, which had long ago been taken by Mrs. Maitland as a bedroom,
for the practical reason that it opened into the dining-room, so her
desk was easily accessible at any time of night, should her passion for
toil seize her after working-hours were over. The walls of this room
were still covered with books, that no one ever read. Mrs. Maitland had
no time to waste on reading; "I _live_," she used to say; "I don't read
about living!" Except the imprisoned books, the only interesting things
in the room were some _cartes-de-visite_ of Blair, which stood in a
dusty row on the bureau, one of them propped against her son's first
present to her--the unopened bottle of Johann Maria Farina. When Blair
was a man, that bottle still stood there, the kid cap over the cork
split and yellow, the ribbons of the little calendar hanging from its
green neck, faded to streaky white.
The office dining-room, about which Blair had begun to be impertinent
when he was eight years old, was of noble proportions and in its day
must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over.
Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather
had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues
and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose
colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room
was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller
desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French
windows were uncurtained, and the inside shutters folded back, so that
the silent clerks might have the benefit of every ray of daylight
filtering wanly through Mercer's murky air. A long table stood in the
middle of the room; generally it was covered with blue-prints, or the
usual impedimenta of an office. But it was not an office table; it was
of mahogany, scratched and dim to be sure, but matching the ancient
claw-footed sideboard whose top was littered with letter files, silver
teapots and sugar-bowls, and stacks of newspapers. Three times a day
one end of this table was cleared, and the early breakfast, or the noon
dinner, or the rather heavy supper eaten rapidly and for the most part
in silence. Mrs. Maitland was silent because she was absorbed in
thought; Nannie and Blair were silent because they were afraid to talk.
But the two children gave a touch of humanness to the ruthless room,
which, indeed, poor little Blair had some excuse for calling a "pigsty."
"When I'm big," Blair announced one afternoon after school, "I'll have
a bunch of flowers on the table, like your mother does; you see if I
don't! I like your mother, David."
"_I_ don't; _very_ much," Elizabeth volunteered. "She looks out of her
eyes at me when I get mad."
"I don't like to live at my house," Blair said, sighing.
"Why don't you run away?" demanded Elizabeth; "I'm going to some day
when I get time."
"Where would you run to?" David said, practically. David was always
disconcertingly practical.
But Elizabeth would not be pinned down to details. "I will decide that
when I get started."
"I believe," Blair meditated, "I will run away."
"I'll tell you what let's do," Elizabeth said, and paused to pick up
her right ankle and hop an ecstatic yard or two on one foot; "I tell
you what let's do: let's all run away, _and get married!_"
The other three stared at her dumfounded. Elizabeth, whirling about on
her toes, dropped down on all--fours to turn a somersault of joy; when
she was on her feet she said, "Oh, _let's_ get married!" But it took
Blair, who always found it difficult to make up his mind, a few moments
to accept the project.
They had planned to devote that afternoon to playing bury-you-alive
under the yellow sofa in Mrs. Richie's parlor, but this idea of
Elizabeth's made it necessary to hide in the "cave"--a shadowy spot
behind the palmtub in the greenhouse--for reflection. Once settled
there, jostling one another like young pigeons, it was David who, as
usual, made the practical objections:
"We haven't any money."
"I suppose we could get all the money we want out of my mother's
cash-box," Blair admitted, wavering.
"That's stealing," Elizabeth said.
"You can't steal from your mother," Nannie defended her brother.
"I'll marry you, Elizabeth," Blair said, with sudden enthusiastic
decision.
But David demurred: "I think _I'd_ like Elizabeth. I'm not sure I want
to marry Nannie."
"You said Nannie's hair was the longest, only yesterday!" Blair said,
angrily.
"But I like Elizabeth's color of hair. Nannie, do you think I'd like
you to marry best, or Elizabeth?"
"I don't believe the color of hair makes any difference in being
married," Nannie said, kindly. "And anyway, you'll have to marry me,
David, 'cause Blair can't. He's my brother."
"He's only your half-brother," David pointed out.
"You can have Nannie," said Blair, "or you can stay out of the play."
"Well, I'll marry Nannie," David said, sadly; and Blair proceeded to
elaborate the scheme. It was very simple: the money in Mrs. Maitland's
cash-box would pay their fare to--"Oh, anywhere," Blair said, then
hesitated: "The only thing is, how'll we get it?"
"I'll get it for you," Nannie said, shuddering.
"Wouldn't you be scared?" Blair asked doubtfully. Everybody knew poor
Nannie was a 'fraid-cat.
"Little people," somebody called from the parlor, "what are you
chattering about?"
The children looked at one another in a panic, but Blair called back
courageously, "Oh, nothing."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Richie, smiling at Mr. Robert Ferguson, who had
dropped in to find Elizabeth--"perhaps you didn't know that my
conservatory was a Pirates' Cave?"
There was a sort of hesitant intimacy now between these two people, but
it had never got so far as friendship. Mrs. Richie's retreating shyness
was courteous, but never cordial; Robert Ferguson's somber egotism was
kind, but never generous. Yet, owing no doubt to their two children,
and to the fact that Mr. Ferguson was continually bringing things over
from his garden borders, to transplant into hers--it improves the
property, he told her briefly--owing to the children and the flowers,
the landlord and the tenant saw each other rather frequently. On this
especial afternoon, though Mr. Ferguson had found Elizabeth, he still
lingered, perhaps to tell the story of some extraordinary thing Mrs.
Maitland had done that day at the Works. "She's been the only man in
the family since old John died," he ended; "and, judging from Blair, I
guess she'll continue to be."
"She is wonderful!" Mrs. Richie agreed; "but she's lovable, too, which
is more important."
"I should as soon say a locomotive was lovable," he said; "not that
that's against her. Quite the contrary."
The pretty woman on the yellow damask sofa by the fireside flushed with
offense. The fact was, this dry, dogmatic man, old at thirty-six, lean,
and in a time of beards clean-shaven, with gray hair that stood
fiercely up from a deeply furrowed brow, and kind, unhappy eyes
blinking behind the magnifying lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses, this
really friendly neighbor, was always offending her--though he was
rather nice about inside repairs. "Why do I endure him?" Mrs. Richie
said to herself sometimes. Perhaps it was because, in spite of his
manners, and his sneer that the world was a mighty mean place to live
in, and his joyless way of doing his duty to his little niece, he
certainly did see how good and sweet her David was. She reminded
herself of this to check her offense at his snub about Mrs. Maitland;
and all the while the good, sweet David was plotting behind the green
tub of the palm-tree in the conservatory. But when Mr. Ferguson called
to Elizabeth to come home with him, and then bent over and fussed about
the buttons on her jacket, and said, anxiously, "Are you warm enough,
Pussy?" Mrs. Richie said to herself: "He _is_ good! It's only his
manners that are bad."
Robert Ferguson went out into the brown November dusk with his little
girl clinging to his hand, for so he understood his duty to his niece;
and on their own doorstep Elizabeth asked a question:
"Uncle, if you get married, do you have to stay married?"
He looked down at her with a start. "_What?_" he said.
"If you don't like being married, do you have to stay?"
"Don't ask foolish questions!" he said; "of course you have to."
Elizabeth sighed. As for her uncle, he was disturbed to the point of
irritation. He dropped her hand with a gesture almost of disgust, and
the lines in his forehead deepened into painful folds. After supper he
called Elizabeth's governess into the library, and shut the door.
"Miss White," he said, knocking his glasses off, "Elizabeth is getting
to be a big girl; will you kindly make a point of teaching her--things?"
"I will do so immejetly, sir," said Miss White. "What things?"
"Why," said Robert Ferguson, helplessly, "why--general morals." He put
his glasses on carefully, with both hands. "Elizabeth asked me a very
improper question; she asked me about divorce, and--"
"_Divorce_!" exclaimed Miss White, astounded; "I have been at my post
for eight years, sir, and I am positive that that word has never been
used in Elizabeth's presence!"
He did not explain. "Teach her," he said, harshly, "that a woman has
got to behave herself."
Blair having once decided upon it, clung to his purpose of running
away, with a persistency which was his mother's large determination in
little; but the double elopement was delayed for two days because of
the difficulty of securing the necessary funds. The dining-room, where
Mrs. Maitland "kept all her money," was rarely entirely deserted. In
those brief intervals when the two clerks were not on hand, Harris
seemed to be possessed of a clean devil, and spent an unusual amount of
time "redding up"; or when Harris was in the kitchen, and Blair,
dragging the reluctant Nannie, had peered into the room, he had been
confronted by his mother. She never saw him--sometimes she was writing;
sometimes talking to a foreman; sometimes knitting, for when Sarah
Maitland had nothing else to do, she made baby socks for the missionary
barrel; once when Blair came to the door, she was walking up and down
knitting rapidly, thinking out some project; her ball of zephyr had
fallen on the floor, and dragging along behind her, unwinding and
unwinding, had involved her hurrying tramp in a grimy, pink tangle.
Each time Blair had looked into the room it was policed by this
absorbed presence. "We'll _never_ get married!" he said in despair. The
delay had a disastrous effect upon romance, for David, with the
melancholy candor of a reasoning temperament, was continually saying
that he doubted the desirability of Nannie as a wife; and Elizabeth was
just as hesitant about Blair.
"Suppose I took a hate to you for a husband? Uncle Robert says if you
don't like being married, you can't stop."
"You won't want to stop. Married people don't have to go to school!"
Elizabeth sighed. "But I don't know but what maybe I'd like David for a
husband?"
"He doesn't have but ten cents a week allowance, and I have a dollar,"
Blair reminded her.
"Well, I don't believe I like being married, anyway," she fretted; "I
like going out to the toll-house for ice-cream better."
Her uncertainty made Blair still more impatient to finance his journey;
and that day, just after dinner, he and Nannie stood quaking at the
dining-room door. "I-I-I'll do it," Blair gasped, with trembling valor.
He was very little, and his eyes were dilating with fright. "I'll do
it," he said, chattering. Nannie rushed into the breach; Nannie never
pretended to be anything but a 'fraid-cat except in things that
concerned Blair; she said now, boldly:
"I'm the oldest, so I ought to."
She crept across the floor, stopping at every step to listen
breathlessly; nothing stirred, except her own little shadow crouching
at her heels.
"Grab in the top drawer," Blair hissed after her; and she put a
shrinking hand into the japanned box, and "grabbed" all the bills she
could hold; then, not waiting to close the drawer, she fled back to
Blair. Up-stairs in her room, they counted the money.
"We can travel all round the world!" Blair whispered, thrilled at the
amount of their loot. But at the last moment there was a
defection--Elizabeth backed out. "I'd rather go out to the toll-house
for ice-cream," she said; "ice-cream at Mrs. Todd's is nicer than being
married. David, don't you go, either. Let Blair and Nannie go. You stay
with me."
But David was not to be moved. "I like traveling; I've traveled a good
deal all my life; and I want to go round the world with Blair."
Elizabeth gave him a black look. "You like Blair better 'an me," she
said, the tears hot in her amber eyes. A minute later she slipped away
to hide under the bed in her own room, peering out from under a lifted
valance for a hoped-for pursuer. But no one came; the other three were
so excited that her absence was hardly noticed.
How they started, the adventurous ones, late that afternoon--later, in
fact, than they planned, because Blair insisted upon running back to
give Harris a parting gift of a dollar; "'Cause, poor Harris! _he_
can't go traveling"--how they waited in the big, barn-like, foggy
station for what Blair called the "next train," how they boarded it for
"any place"--all seemed very funny when they were old enough to look
back upon it. It even seemed funny, a day or two afterward, to their
alarmed elders. But at the time it was not amusing to anybody. David
was gloomy at being obliged to marry Nannie; "I pretty near wish I'd
stayed with Elizabeth," he said, crossly. Nannie was frightened,
because, she declared, "Mamma'll be mad;--now I tell you, Blair, she'll
be mad!" And Blair was sulky because he had no wife. Yet, in spite of
these varying emotions, pushed by Blair's resolution, they really did
venture forth to "travel all around the world!"
As for the grown people's feelings about the elopement, they ran the
gamut from panic to amusement.... At a little after five o'clock, Miss
White heard sobbing in Elizabeth's room, and going in, found the little
girl blacking her boots and crying furiously. "Elizabeth! my lamb! What
is the matter?"
"I have a great many sorrows," said Elizabeth, with a hiccup of despair.
"But what _are_ you doing?"
"I am blacking my red shoes," Elizabeth wailed; and so she was, the
blacking-sponge on its shaky wire dripping all over the carpet. "My
beautiful red shoes; I am blacking them; and now they are spoiled
forever."
"But why do you want to spoil them?" gasped Miss White, struggling to
take the blacking-bottle away from her. "Elizabeth, tell me immejetly!
What has happened?"
"I didn't go on the journey," said Elizabeth; "and David wouldn't stay
at home with me; he liked Blair and Nannie better 'an me. He hurt my
feelings; so pretty soon right away I got mad--mad--mad--to think he
wouldn't stay with me. I always get mad if my feelings are hurt, and
David Richie is always hurting 'em. I despise him for making me mad! I
despise him for treating me so--_hideous_! And so I took a hate to my
shoes." The ensuing explanation sent Miss White, breathless, to tell
Mrs. Richie; but Mrs. Richie was not at home.
When David did not appear that afternoon after school, Mrs. Richie was
disturbed. By three o'clock she was uneasy; but it was nearly five
before the quiver of apprehension grew into positive fright; then she
put on her things and walked down to the Maitland house.
"Is David here?" she demanded when Harris answered her ring; "please go
up-stairs and look, Harris; they may be playing in the nursery. I am
worried."
Harris shuffled off, and Mrs. Richie, following him to the foot of the
stairs, stood there gripping the newel-post.
"They ain't here," Harris announced from the top landing.
Mrs. Richie sank down on the lowest step.
"Harris!" some one called peremptorily, and she turned to see Robert
Ferguson coming out of the dining-room: "Oh, you're here, Mrs. Richie?
I suppose you are on David's track. I thought Harris might have some
clue. I came down to tell Mrs. Maitland all we could wring from
Elizabeth."
Before she could ask what he meant, Blair's mother joined them. "I
haven't a doubt they are playing in the orchard," she said.
"No, they're not," her superintendent contradicted; "Elizabeth says
they were going to 'travel'; but that's all we could get out of her."
"'Travel'! Oh, what does she mean?" Mrs. Richie said; "I'm so
frightened!"
"What's the use of being frightened?" Mrs. Maitland asked, curiously;
"it won't bring them back if they are lost, will it?"
Robert Ferguson knocked his glasses off fiercely. "They couldn't be
lost in Mercer," he reassured David's mother.
"Well, whether they've run away or not, come into my room and talk
about it like a sensible woman," said Mrs. Maitland; "what's the use of
sitting on the stairs? Women have such a way of sitting on stairs when
things go wrong! Suppose they are lost. What harm's done? They'll turn
up. Come!" Mrs. Richie came. Everybody "came" or went, or stood still,
when Mrs. Maitland said the word! And though not commanded, Mr.
Ferguson came too.
In the dining-room Mrs. Maitland took no part in the perplexed
discussion that followed. At her desk, in her revolving chair, she had
instinctively taken up her pen; there was a perceptible instant in
which she got her mind off her own affairs and put it on this matter of
the children. Then she laid the pen down, and turned around to face the
other two; but idleness irritated her, and she reached for a ball of
pink worsted skewered by bone needles. She asked no questions and made
no comments, but knitting rapidly, listened, until apparently her
patience came to an end; then with a grunt she whirled round to her
desk and again picked up her pen. But as she did so she paused, pen in
air; threw it down, and pounding the flat of her hand on her desk,
laughed loudly:
"I know! I know!" And revolving back again in leisurely relief to face
them, she said, with open amusement: "When I came home this afternoon,
I found this drawer half open and the bills in my cash-box disturbed.
They've"--her voice was suddenly drowned in the rumble of a train on
the spur track; the house shook slightly, and a gust of black smoke was
vomited against the windows;--"they've helped themselves and gone off
to enjoy it! We'll get on their trail at the railroad station. That's
what Elizabeth meant by 'traveling.'"
Mrs. Richie turned terrified eyes toward Mr. Ferguson.
"Why, of course!" he said, "the monkeys!"
But Mrs. Richie seemed more frightened than ever. "The
railroad!--_Oh_--"
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Maitland; "they're all right. The ticket-agent
will remember them. Mr. Ferguson, telegraph to their destination,
wherever it is, and have them shipped back. No police help at this end
yet, if you please."
Robert Ferguson nodded. "Of course everything is all right," he said.
"I'll let you know the minute I find traces of them, Mrs. Richie." When
he reached the door, he came back. "Now don't you worry; I could thrash
those boys for bothering you!" At which she tried to smile, but there
was a quiver in her chin.
"Harris!" Mrs. Maitland broke in, "supper! Mrs. Richie, you are going
to have something to eat."
"Oh, I can't--"
"What? You are not saying _can't?_ 'Can't' is a 'bad word,' you know."
She got up--a big, heavy woman, in a gray bag of a dress that only
reached to the top of her boots--and stood with her hands on her hips;
her gray hair was twisted into a small, tight knot at the back of her
head, and her face looked like iron that had once been molten and had
cooled into roughened immobility. It was not an unamiable face; as she
stood there looking down at Mrs. Richie she even smiled the half-amused
smile one might bestow on a puppy, and she put a kindly hand on the
other mother's shoulder. "Don't be so scared, woman! They'll be found."
"You don't think anything could have happened to him?" Mrs. Richie
said, trembling; "you don't think he could have been run over, or--or
anything?" She clutched at the big hand and clung to it.
"No," Mrs. Maitland said, dryly; "I don't think anything has happened
to him."
Mrs. Richie had the grace to blush. "Of course I meant Blair and
Nannie, too," she murmured.
"You never thought of 'em!" Mrs. Maitland said, chuckling; "now you
must have some supper."
They were in the midst of it when a note came from Mr. Ferguson to say
that he was on the track of the runaways. He had sent a despatch that
would insure their being returned by the next train, and he was himself
going half-way up the road to meet them. Then a postscript: "Tell Mrs.
Richie not to worry."
"Doesn't seem much disturbed about my worry," said Mrs. Maitland,
jocosely significant; then with loud cheerfulness she tried to rally
her guest: "It's all right; what did I tell you? Where's my knitting?
Come; I'll go over to the parlor with you; we'll sit there."
Mrs. Maitland's parlor was not calculated to cheer a panic-stricken
mother. It was a vast room, rather chilly on this foggy November
evening, and smelling of soot. On its remote ceiling was a design in
delicate relief of garlands and wreaths, which the dingy years had not
been able to rob of its austere beauty. Two veined black-marble columns
supported an arch that divided the desert of the large room into two
smaller rooms, each of which had the center-table of the period, its
bleak white-marble top covered with elaborately gilded books that no
one ever opened. Each room had, too, a great cut-glass chandelier,
swathed in brown paper-muslin and looking like a gigantic withered
pear. Each had its fireplace, with a mantelpiece of funereal marble to
match the pillars. Mrs. Maitland had refurnished this parlor when she
came to the old house as a bride; she banished to the lumber-room, or
even to the auctioneer's stand, the heavy, stately mahogany of the
early part of the century, and purchased according to the fashion of
the day, glittering rosewood, carved and gilded and as costly as could
be found. Between the windows at each end of the long room were mirrors
in enormous gilt frames; the windows themselves, topped with cornices
and heavy lambrequins, were hung with crimson brocade; a grand piano,
very bare and shining, sprawled sidewise between the black columns of
the arch, and on the wall opposite the fireplaces were four large
landscapes in oil, of exactly the same size. "Herbert likes pictures,"
the bride said to herself when she purchased them. "That goose Molly
Wharton wouldn't have been able to buy 'em for him!" The only pleasant
thing in the meaningless room was Nannie's drawing-board, which
displayed the little girl's painstaking and surprisingly exact copy in
lead-pencil, of some chromo--"Evangeline" perhaps, or some popular
sentimentality of the sixties. In the ten years which had elapsed since
Mrs. Maitland had plunged into her debauch of furnishing--her one
extravagance!--of course the parlors had softened; the enormous roses
of the carpets had faded, the glitter of varnish had dimmed; but the
change was not sufficient to blur in Mrs. Maitland's eyes, all the
costly and ugly glory of the room. She cast a complacent glance about
her as she motioned her nervous and preoccupied guest to a chair. "How
do you like Mercer?" she said, beginning to knit rapidly.
"Oh, very well; it is a little--smoky," Mrs. Richie said, glancing at
the clock.
Mrs. Maitland grunted. "Mercer would be in a bad way without its smoke.
You ought to learn to like it, as I do! I like the smell of it, I like
the taste of it, I like the feel of it!"
"Really?" Mrs. Richie murmured; she was watching the clock.
"That smoke, let me tell you Mrs. Richie is the pillar of cloud, to
this country! (If you read your Bible, you'll know what that means.) I
think of it whenever I look at my stacks."
Mrs. Maitland's resentment at her guest's mild criticism was obvious;
but Mrs. Richie did not notice it. "I think I'll go down to the station
and meet the children," she said, rising.
"I'm afraid you are a very foolish woman," Sarah Maitland said;--and
Mrs. Richie sat down. "Mr. Ferguson will bring 'em here. Anyway, this
clock is half an hour slow. They'll be here before you could get to the
station." She chuckled, slyly. Her sense of humor was entirely
rudimentary, and never got beyond the practical joke. "I've been
watching you look at that clock," she said; then she looked at it
herself and frowned. She was wasting a good deal of time over this
business of the children. But in spite of herself, glancing at the
graceful figure sitting in tense waiting at the fireside, she smiled.
"You are a pretty creature," she said; and Mrs. Richie started and
blushed like a girl. "If Robert Ferguson had any sense!" she went on,
and paused to pick up a dropped stitch. "Queer fellow, isn't he?" Mrs.
Richie had nothing to say. "Something went wrong with him when he was
young, just after he left college. Some kind of a crash. Woman scrape,
I suppose. Have you ever noticed that women make all the trouble in the
world? Well, he never got over it. He told me once that Life wouldn't
play but one trick on him. 'We're always going to sit down on a
chair--and Life pulls it from under us,' he said. 'It won't do that to
me twice.' He's not given to being confidential, but that put me on the
track. And now he's got Elizabeth on his hands."
"She's a dear little thing," Mrs. Richie said, smiling; "though I
confess she always fights shy of me; she doesn't like me, I'm afraid."
Mrs. Maitland lifted an eyebrow. "She's a corked-up volcano. Robert
Ferguson ought to get married, and give her an aunt to look after her."
She glanced at Mrs. Richie again, with appraising eyes; "pity he hasn't
more sense."
"I think I hear a carriage," Mrs. Richie said, coldly. Then she forgot
Mrs. Maitland, and stood waiting and trembling. A minute later Mr.
Ferguson ushered the three sleepy, whimpering children into the room,
and Mrs. Richie caught her grimy, crying little boy in her arms and
cried with him. "Oh, David, oh, David--my darling! How could you
frighten mother so!"
She was on her knees before him, and while her tears and kisses fell on
his tousled thatch of yellow hair, he burrowed his dirty little face
among the laces around her white throat and bawled louder than ever.
Mrs. Maitland, her back to the fireplace, her hands on her hips, stood
looking on; she was very much interested. Blair, hungry and sleepy and
evidently frightened, was nuzzling up against Mrs. Richie, catching at
her hand and trying to hide behind her skirts; he looked furtively at
his mother, but he would not meet her eye.
"Blair," she said, "go to bed."
"Nannie and me want some supper," said Blair in a whisper.
"You won't get any. Boys that go traveling at supper-time can get their
own suppers or go hungry."
"It's my fault, Mamma," Nannie panted.
"No, it ain't!" Blair said quickly, emerging from behind Mrs. Richie;
"it was me made her do it."
"Well, clear out, clear out! Go to bed, both of you," Mrs. Maitland
said. But when the two children had scuttled out of the room she struck
her knee with her fist and laughed immoderately.
The next morning, when the two children skulked palely into the
dining-room, they were still frightened. Mrs. Maitland, however, did
not notice them. She was absorbed in trying in the murky light to read
the morning paper, propped against the silver urn in front of her.
"Sit down," she said; "I don't like children who are late for
breakfast. Bless, O Lord, we beseech Thee, these things to our use, and
us to Thy service and glory. Amen!--Harris! Light the gas."
Mercer's daylight was always more or less wan; but in the autumn the
yellow fogs seemed to press the low-hanging smoke down into the great
bowl of the hills at the bottom of which the town lay, and the wanness
scarcely lightened, even at high noon. On such days the gas in the
dining-room--or office, if one prefers to call it so--flared from
breakfast until dinner time. It flared now on two scared little faces.
Once Blair lifted questioning eyebrows at Harris, and managed when the
man brought his plate of porridge to whisper, "mad?" At which the
sympathetic Harris rolled his eyes speechlessly, and the two children
grew perceptibly paler. But when, abruptly, Mrs. Maitland crumpled her
newspaper together and threw it on the floor, her absorbed face showed
no displeasure. The fact was, she had forgotten the affair of the night
before; it was the children's obvious alarm which reminded her that the
business of scolding and punishing must be attended to. She got up from
the table and stood behind them, with her back to the fire; she began
to nibble the upper joint of her forefinger, wondering just how to
begin. This silent inspection of their shoulders made the little
creatures quiver. Nannie crumbled her bread into a heap, and Blair
carried an empty spoon to his mouth with automatic regularity; Harris,
in the pantry, in a paroxysm of sympathy, stretched his lean neck to
the crack of the half-open door.
"Children!"
"Yes, ma'am," Nannie quavered.
"Turn round."
They turned. Nannie began to cry. Blair twisted a button on his coat
with a grip that made his fingers white.
"Come into my room."
The children gasped with dismay. Mrs. Maitland's bedroom was a
nightmare of a place to them both. It was generally dark, for the lower
halves of the inside shutters were apt to be closed; but, worse than
that, the glimmering glass doors of the bookcases that lined the walls
held a suggestion of mystery that was curiously terrifying. Whenever
they entered the room, the brother and sister always kept a frightened
eye on those doors. This dull winter morning, when they came quaking
along behind their mother into this grim place, it was still in the
squalor of morning confusion. Later, Harris would open the shutters and
tidy things up; he would dust the painted pine bureau and Blair's
photographs and the slender green bottle of German cologne on which the
red ribbons of the calendar were beginning to fade; now everything was
dark and bleak and covered with dust. Mrs. Maitland sat down; the
culprits stood hand in hand in front of her.
"Blair, don't you know it's wrong to take what doesn't belong to you?"
"I took it," said the 'fraid-cat, faintly; she moved in front of her
brother as though to protect him.
"Blair told you to," his mother said.
"Yes," Blair blurted out, "it was me told her to."
"People that take things that don't belong to them go to hell," Mrs.
Maitland said; "haven't you learned that in Sunday-school?"
Silence.
"You ought to be punished very severely, Blair--and Nannie, too. But I
am very busy this morning, so I shall only say"--she hesitated; what on
earth should she say! "that--that you shall lose your allowance for
this week, both of you."
One of them muttered, "Yes'm."
Mrs. Maitland looked as uncomfortable as they did. She wondered what to
do next. How much simpler a furnace was than a child! "Well," she said,
"that's all--at present"; it had suddenly occurred to her that
apprehension was a good thing; "_at present_," she repeated darkly;
"and Blair, remember; thieves go to hell." She watched them with
perplexed eyes as they hurried out of the room; just as they reached
the door she called: "Blair!"
The child stopped short in his tracks and quivered.
"Come here." He came, slowly, his very feet showing his reluctance.
"Blair," she said--in her effort to speak gently her voice grated; she
put out her hand as if to draw him to her, but the child shivered and
moved aside. Mrs. Maitland looked at him dumbly; then bent toward him,
and her hands, hanging between her knees, opened and closed, and even
half stretched out as if in inarticulate entreaty. Nannie, in the
doorway, sobbing under her breath, watched with frightened,
uncomprehending eyes. "My son," Sarah Maitland said, with as much
mildness as her loud voice could express, "what did you mean to do when
you ran away?" She smiled, but he would not meet her eyes. "Tell me, my
boy, why did you run away?"
Blair tried to speak, cleared his throat, and blurted out four husky
words: "Don't like it here."
"Don't like what? Your home?"
Blair nodded.
"Why not?" she asked, astonished.
"Ugly," Blair said, faintly.
"Ugly! What is ugly?"
Blair, without looking up, made a little, swift gesture with his hand.
"This," he said; then suddenly he lifted his head, gave her a sidewise,
shrinking look, and dropped his eyes. The color flew into Mrs.
Maitland's face; with an ejaculation of anger, she got on her feet.
"You are a very foolish and very bad little boy," she said; "you don't
know what you are talking about. I had meant to increase your
allowance, but now I won't do it. Listen to me; it is no matter whether
a house, or a--a person, is what you call 'ugly.' What matters is
whether they are useful. Everything in the world ought to be
useful--like our Works. If I ever hear you saying you don't like a
thing because it's ugly, I shall--I shall not give you any money at
all. Money!" she burst out, suddenly fluent, "money isn't _pretty_!
Dirty scraps of paper, bits of silver that look like lead--perhaps you
call money 'ugly,' too?"
Her vehemence was a sort of self-defense; it was a subtle confession
that she felt in this little repelling personality the challenge of an
equal; but Blair only gaped at her in childish confusion; and instantly
his mother was herself again. "Clear out, now; and be a good boy." When
she was alone, she sat at her desk in the dining-room for several
minutes without taking up her pen. Her face burned from the slap of the
child's words; but below the scorch of anger and mortification her
heart was bruised. He did not like her to put her arm about him! She
drew a long breath and began to read her letters; but all the while she
was thinking of that scene in the parlor the night before: Blair
crouching against Mrs. Richie, clinging to her white hand;--voluntarily
Sarah Maitland looked at her own hand; "I suppose," she said to
herself, "he thinks hers is 'pretty'! Where does he get such notions? I
wonder what kind of a woman she is, anyway; she never says anything
about her husband."