Nobody except David took the childish love-affair very seriously, not
even the principals--especially not Elizabeth. . . .
David did not see her for a day or two, except out of the corner of his
eye when, during the new and still secret rite of shaving--for David
was willing to shed his blood to prove that he was a man--he looked out
of his bedroom window and saw her down in the garden helping her uncle
feed his pigeons. He did not want to see her. He was younger than his
years, this honest-eyed, inexpressive fellow of seventeen, but for all
his youth he was hard hit. He grew abruptly older that first week; he
didn't sleep well; he even looked a little pale under his freckles, and
his mother worried over his appetite. When she asked him what was the
matter, he said, listlessly, "Nothing." They were very intimate friends
these two, but that moment on the bridge marked the beginning of the
period--known to all mothers of sons--of the boy's temporary retreat
into himself. . . . When a day or two later David saw Elizabeth, or
rather when she, picking a bunch of heliotrope in her garden, saw him
through the open door in the wall, and called to him to come "right
over! as fast as your legs can carry you!"--he was, she thought, "very
queer." He came in answer to the summons, but he had nothing to say.
She, however, was bubbling over with talk. She took his hand, and,
running with him into the arbor, pulled him down on the seat beside her.
"David! Where on earth have you been all this time? David, _have you
heard?_"
"I suppose you mean--about you and Blair?" he said. He did not look at
her, but he watched a pencil of sunshine, piercing the leaves overhead,
faintly gilding the bunches of green grapes that had a film of soot on
their greenness, and then creeping down to rest on the heliotrope in
her lap.
"Yes!" said Elizabeth. "Isn't it the most exciting thing you ever
heard? David, I want to show you something." She peered out through the
leaves to make sure that they were unobserved. "It's a terrific
secret!" she said, her eyes dancing. Her fingers were at her throat,
fumbling with the fastening of her dress, which caught, and had to be
pulled open with a jerk; then she drew half-way from her young bosom a
ring hanging on a black silk thread. She bent forward a little, so that
he might see it. "I keep it down in there so Cherry-pie won't know,"
she whispered. "_Look!_"
David looked--and looked away.
Elizabeth, with a blissful sigh, dropped the ring back again into the
warm whiteness of that secret place. "Isn't it perfectly lovely? It's
my engagement ring! I'm so excited!"
David was silent.
"Why, David Richie! You don't care a bit!"
"Why, yes, I do," he said. He took a grape from a bunch beside him,
rubbed the soot off on his trousers, and ate it; then blinked wryly.
"Gorry, that's sour."
"You--don't--like--my engagement!" Elizabeth declared slowly.
Reproachful tears stood in her eyes; she fastened her dress with
indignant fingers. "I think you are perfectly horrid not to be
sympathetic. It's very important to a girl to get engaged and have a
ring."
"It's very pretty," David managed to say.
"Pretty? I should say it was pretty! It cost fifty dollars! Blair said
so. David, what on earth is the matter! Don't you like me being
engaged?"
"Oh, it's all right," he evaded. He shut his eyes, which were still
watering from that sour grape, but even with closed eyes he saw again
that soft place where Blair's ring hung, warm and secret; the pain
below his own breast-bone was very bad for a minute, and the hot
fragrance of the heliotrope seemed overpowering. He swallowed hard,
then looked at one of Mr. Ferguson's pigeons, walking almost into the
arbor. The pigeon stopped, hesitated, cocked a ruby eye on the two
humans on the wooden seat, and fluttered back into the sunny garden.
"Why, you _mind_!" Elizabeth said, aghast.
"Oh, it's nothing to me," David managed to say; "course, I don't care.
Only I didn't know you liked Blair so much; so it was a--a surprise,"
he said miserably.
Elizabeth's consternation was beyond words. There was a perceptible
moment before she could find anything to say. "Why, I never dreamed
you'd mind! David, truly, I like you best of any boy I know;--only, of
course now, being engaged to Blair, I have to like him best?"
"Yes that's so," David admitted.
"Truly, I like you dreadfully, David. If I'd supposed you'd mind--But,
oh, David, it's so interesting to be engaged. I really can't stop. I'd
have to give him back my ring!" she said in an agonized voice. She
pressed her hand against her breast, and poor David's eyes followed the
ardent gesture.
"It's all right," he said with a gulp.
Elizabeth was ready to cry; she dropped her head on his shoulder and
began to bemoan herself. "Why on earth didn't you _say_ something? How
could I know? How stupid you are, David! If I'd known you minded, I'd
just as lief have been engaged to--" Elizabeth stopped short. She sat
up very straight, and put her hand to the neck of her dress to make
sure it was fastened. At that moment a new sense was born in her; for
the first time since they had known each other, her straightforward
eyes--the sexless eyes of a child--faltered, and refused to meet
David's. "I think maybe Cherry-pie wants me now," she said shyly, and
slipped away, leaving David mournfully eating green grapes in the
arbor. This was the last time that Elizabeth, uninvited, put her head
on a boy's shoulder.
A week later she confided to Miss White the great fact of her
engagement; but she was not so excited about it by that time. For one
thing, she had received her uncle's present of a locket, so the ring
was not her only piece of jewelry; and besides that, since her talk
with David, being "engaged" had seemed less interesting. However, Miss
White felt it her duty to drop a hint of what had happened to Mr.
Ferguson: had it struck him that perhaps Blair Maitland was--was
thinking about Elizabeth?
"Thinking what about her?" Mr. Ferguson said, lifting his head from his
papers with a fretted look.
"Why," said Miss White, "as I am always at my post, sir, I have
opportunities for observing; in fact, I shouldn't wonder if they
were--attached." Cherry-pie would have felt that a more definite word
was indelicate. "Of course I don't exactly _know_ it," said Miss White,
faithful to Elizabeth's confidence, "but I recall that when I was a
young lady, young gentlemen did become attached--to other young ladies."
"Love-making? At her age? I won't have it!" said Robert Ferguson. The
old, apprehensive look darkened in his face; his feeling for the child
was so strangely shadowed by his fear that "Life would play another
trick on him," and Elizabeth would disappoint him some way, that he
could not take Cherry-pie's information with any appreciation of its
humor. "Send her to me," he said.
"Mr. Ferguson," poor old Miss White ventured, "if I might suggest, it
would be well to be very kind, because--"
"Kind?" said Robert Ferguson, astonished; he gave an angry thrust at
the black ribbon of his glasses that brought them tumbling from his
nose. "Was I unkind? I will see her in the library after supper."
Miss White nibbled at him speechlessly. "If he is severe with her, I
don't know what she _won't_ do," she said to herself.
But Mr. Ferguson did not mean to be severe. When Elizabeth presented
herself in his library, the interview began calmly enough. Her uncle
was brief and to the point, but he was not unkind. She and Blair were
too young to be engaged,--"Don't think of it again," he commanded.
Elizabeth looked tearful, but she did not resent his dictum;--David's
lack of sympathy had been very dampening to romance. It was just at the
end that the gunpowder flared.
"Now, remember, I don't want you to be foolish Elizabeth."
"I don't think being in love is foolish, Uncle."
"Love! What do you know about love? You are nothing but a silly little
girl."
"I don't think I'm very little; and Blair is in love with me."
"Blair is as young and as foolish as you are. Even if you were older, I
wouldn't allow it. He is selfish and irresponsible, and--"
"I think," interrupted Elizabeth, "that you are very mean to abuse
Blair behind his back. It isn't fair." Her uncle was perfectly
dumfounded; then he went into harsh reproof. Elizabeth grew whiter and
whiter and the dimple in her cheek lengthened into a long, hairline. "I
wish I didn't live with you. I wish my mother were alive. _She_ would
be good to me!"
"Your mother?" said Robert Ferguson; his involuntary grunt of cynical
amusement touched the child like a whip. Her fury was appalling. She
screamed at him that she hated him! She loved her mother! She was going
to marry Blair the minute she was grown up! Then she whirled out of the
room, almost knocking over poor old Miss White, whose "post" had been
anxiously near the key-hole.
Up-stairs, her rage scared her governess nearly to death: "My lamb!
You'll get overheated, and take cold. When I was a young lady, it was
thought unrefined to speak so--emphatically. And your dear uncle didn't
mean to be severe; he--"
'"Dear uncle'?" said Elizabeth, "dear devil! He hurt my feelings. He
made fun of my mother!" As she spoke, she leaped at a photograph of
Robert Ferguson which stood on her bureau, and, doubling her hand,
struck the thin glass with all her force. It splintered, and the blood
spurted from her cut knuckles on to her uncle's face.
Miss White began to cry. "Oh, my dear, my dear, try to control
yourself, or you'll do something dreadful some day!" Cherry-pie's
efforts to check Elizabeth's temper were like the protesting
twitterings of a sparrow in a thunder-storm. When she reproved her now,
the furious little creature, wincing and trying to check the bleeding
with her handkerchief, did not even take the trouble to reply. Later,
of course, the inevitable moment of penitence came; but it was not
because she had lost her temper; loss of temper was always a trifling
matter to Elizabeth; it was because she had been disrespectful to her
uncle's picture. That night, when all the household was in bed, she
slipped down-stairs, candle in hand, to the library. On the mantelpiece
was a photograph of herself; she took it out of the frame, tore it into
little bits, stamped on it, grinding her heel down on her own young
face; then she took off the locket Mr. Ferguson had given her,--a most
simple affair of pearls and turquoise; kissed it with passion, and
looked about her: where should it be offered up? The ashes in the
fireplace? No; the house-maid would find it there. Then she had an
inspiration--the deep well of her uncle's battered old inkstand! Oh, to
blacken the pearls, to stain the heavenly blue of the turquoise! It was
almost too frightful. But it was right. She had hurt his feelings by
saying she wished she didn't have to live with him, and she had
insulted his dear, dear, _dear_ picture! So, with a tearful hiccup, she
dropped the locket into the ink-pot that stood between the feet of a
spattered bronze Socrates, and watched it sink into a black and
terrible grave. "I'm glad not to have it," she said, and felt that she
had squared matters with her conscience.
As for Robert Ferguson, he did not notice that the photograph had
disappeared, nor did he plunge his pen deep enough to find a pearl, nor
understand the significance of the bound-up hand, but the old worry
about her came back again. Her mother had defended her own wicked
love-affair, with all the violence of a selfish woman; and in his panic
of apprehension, poor little Elizabeth's defense of Blair seemed to be
of the same nature. He was so worried over it that he was moved to do a
very unwise thing. He would, he said to himself, put Mrs. Maitland on
her guard about this nonsense between the two children.
The next morning when he went into her office at the Works, he found
the place humming with business. As he entered he met a foreman, just
taking his departure with, so to speak, his tail between his legs. The
man was scarlet to his forehead under the lash of his employer's
tongue. It had been administered in the inner room; but the door was
open into the large office, and as Mrs. Maitland had not seen fit to
modulate her voice, the clerks and some messenger-boys and a couple of
traveling-men had had the benefit of it. Ferguson, reporting at that
open door, was bidden curtly to come in and sit down. "I'll see you
presently," she said, and burst out into the large office. Instantly
the roomful of people, lounging about waiting their turn, came to
attention. She rushed in among them like a gale, whirling away the
straws and chaff before her, and leaving only the things that were
worth while. She snapped a yellow envelope from a boy's hand, and even
while she was ripping it open with a big forefinger, she was reading
the card of an astonished traveling-man: "No, sir; no, sir; your bid
was one-half of one per cent, over Heintz. Your people been customers
so long that they thought that I--? I never mix business and
friendship!" She stood still long enough to run her eye over the
drawing of a patent, and toss it back to the would-be inventor. "No, I
don't care to take it up with you. Cast it for you? Certainly. I'll
cast anything for anybody"; and the man found his blueprint in his hand
before he could begin his explanation. "What? Johnson wants to know
where to get the new housing to replace the one that broke yesterday?
Tell Johnson that's what I pay him to decide. I have no time to do his
business for him--my own is all I can attend to! Mr. Ferguson!" she
called out, as she came banging back into the private office, "what
about that ore that came in yesterday?" She sat down at her desk and
listened intently to a somewhat intricate statement involving
manufacturing matters dependent upon the quality of certain shipments
of ore. Then, abruptly she gave her orders.
Robert Ferguson, making notes as rapidly as he could, smiled with
satisfaction at the power of it all. It was as ruthless and as
admirable as a force of nature. She would not pause, this woman, for
flesh and blood; she was as impersonal as one of her own great shears
that would bite off a "bloom" or a man's head with equal precision, and
in doing so would be fulfilling the law of its being. Assuredly she
would stop Blair's puppy-love in short order!
Business over, Sarah Maitland leaned back in her chair and laughed.
"Did you hear me blowing Dale up? I guess he'll stay put for a while
now! But I'm afraid I was angry," she confessed sheepishly; "and there
is nothing on earth so foolish as to be angry at a fool."
"There is nothing on earth so irritating as a fool," he said.
"Yes, but it's absurd to waste your temper on 'em. I always say to
myself, 'Sarah Maitland, if he had your brains, he'd have your job.'
That generally keeps me cool; but I'm afraid I shall never learn to
suffer Mr. Doestick's friends, gladly. Read your Bible, and you'll know
where that comes from! I tell you, friend Ferguson, you ought to thank
God every day that you weren't born a fool; and so ought I. Well what
can I do for you?"
"I am bothered about Elizabeth and Blair."
She looked at him blankly for a moment. "Elizabeth? Blair? What about
Elizabeth and Blair?"
"It appears," Robert Ferguson said, and shoved the door shut with his
foot, "it appears that there has been some love-making."
"Love-making?" she repeated, bewildered.
"Blair has been talking to Elizabeth," he explained. "I believe they
call themselves engaged."
Mrs. Maitland flung her head back with a loud laugh. At the shock of
such a sound in such a place, one of the clerks in the other room spun
round on his stool, and Mrs. Maitland, catching sight of him through
the glass partition, broke the laugh off in the middle. "Well, upon my
word!" she said.
"Of course it's all nonsense, but it must be stopped."
"Why?" said Mrs. Maitland. And her superintendent felt a jar of
astonishment.
"They are children."
"Blair is sixteen," his mother said thoughtfully; "if he thinks he is
in love with Elizabeth, it will help to make a man of him. Furthermore,
I'd rather have him make love than make pictures;--that is his last
fancy," she said, frowning. "I don't know how he comes by it. Of
course, my husband did paint sometimes, I admit; but he never wanted to
make a business of it. He was no fool, I can tell you, if he did make
pictures!"
Robert Ferguson said dryly that he didn't think she need worry about
Blair. "He has neither industry nor humility," he said, "and you can't
be an artist without both of 'em. But as for this love business, they
are children!"
Mrs. Maitland was not listening. "To be in love will be steadying him
while he's at college. If he sticks to Elizabeth till he graduates, I
sha'n't object."
"I shall object."
But she did not notice his protest.
"She has more temper than is quite comfortable," she ruminated; "but,
after all, to a young man being engaged is like having a dog; one dog
does as well as another; one girl does as well as another. And it isn't
as if Blair had to consider whether his wife would be a 'good manager,'
as they say; he'll have enough to waste, if he wants to. He'll have
more than he knows what to do with!" There was a little proud bridling
of her head. She, who had never wasted a cent in her life, had made it
possible for her boy to be as wasteful as he pleased. "Yes," she said,
with the quick decision which was so characteristic of her, "yes, he
can have her."
"No, he can't," said Elizabeth's uncle.
"What?" she said, in frank surprise.
"Blair will have too much money. Inherited wealth is the biggest
handicap a man can have."
"Too much money?" she chuckled; "your bearings are getting hot, ain't
they? Come, come! I'm not so sure you need thank God. How can a man
have too much money? That's nonsense!" She banged her hand down on the
call-bell on her desk. "Evans! Bring me the drawings for those
channels."
"I tell you I won't have it," Robert Ferguson repeated.
"I mean the blue-prints!" Mrs. Maitland commanded loudly; "you have no
sense, Evans!" Ferguson got up; she had a way of not hearing when she
was spoken to that made a man hot along his backbone. Robert Ferguson
was hot, but he meant to have the last word; he paused at the door and
looked back.
"I shall not allow it."
"Good-day, Mr. Ferguson," said his employer, deep in the blue-prints.