For the next five or six years Blair was not often at home. At the end
of his freshman year he was conditioned, and found a tutor and the
seashore and his sketching--for he painted with some enthusiasm just at
that time--much more attractive than his mother and Mercer. After that
he went to Europe in the long vacations.
"How much vacation have I had since I began to run his business for
him?" his mother said once in answer to Nannie's intercession that he
might be allowed to travel. But she let him go. She did not know how to
do anything else; she always let him do what he pleased, and have what
he wanted; she gave him everything, and she exacted no equivalent,
either in scholarship or conduct. It never occurred to her to make him
appreciate his privileges by paying for them, and so, of course, she
pauperized him.
"Blair likes Europe," she said one Sunday afternoon to David Richie,
who had come in to see Nannie, "but as for me, I wouldn't take an hour
of my good time, or spend a dollar of my good money, to see the best of
their cathedrals and statues and things. Do you mean to say there is a
cathedral in the world as handsome as my new foundry?"
"Well," David said modestly, "I haven't seen any cathedrals, you know,
Mrs. Maitland."
"It's small loss to you, David," she said kindly. "But I wish I'd
thought to invite you to go along with Blair last summer. You might
have liked it, though you are a pretty sensible fellow in most things."
"Oh, I can't go to Europe till I can earn enough to pay my own way,"
David replied, and added with a quick look at Nannie, "besides, I like
being in Mercer."
"Blair has no need to earn money," said Mrs. Maitland carelessly; then
she blew out her lips in a bubbling sigh. "And he would rather see a
cathedral than his mother."
The pathos of that pricked even the pleasant egotism of youth; David
winced, and Nannie tried to murmur something of her brother's needing
the rest.
Mrs. Maitland gave her grunt of amusement. "Rest! What's he ever done
to tire him? Well! Clear out, clear out, you two,--if you're going to
take a walk. I'm glad _you_ came back for your vacation, David, at any
rate. Nannie needs shaking up. She sticks at home here with me, and a
girl ought to see people once in a while." She glanced at the two young
creatures shrewdly. "Why not?" she reflected. She had never thought of
it before, but "why not?" It would be a very sensible arrangement. The
next moment she had decided that it should be! Nannie's money would be
a help to the boy, and he needn't depend on his doctoring business. "I
must put it through," she said to herself, just as she might have said
that she should put through a piece of work in the office.
This match-making purpose made her invite David to supper very
frequently, and every time he came she was apt, after he had taken his
departure, to tramp into Nannie's parlor in the hope of being told that
the "sensible arrangement" had been made. When she found them together,
and caught a word or two about Elizabeth, she had no flash of insight.
But, except to her, the situation as regarded David and Elizabeth was
perfectly clear.
When, seven years before, the two boys had gone off together to
college, Blair had confided to his friend that his faith in women was
forever destroyed, "Though I shall love Elizabeth, always," he said.
"Maybe she'll come round?" David tried to comfort him.
"If she doesn't, I shall never love another woman," Blair said darkly.
David was silent. But as he and Blair were just then in the Damon and
Pythias stage, and had sworn to each other that "no woman should ever
come between them," he gave a hopeless shrug. "That dishes me," he said
to himself; "so long as he will never love any other girl, I can't cut
in."
It would have been rather a relief to Mrs. Richie to know that her son
had reached this artless conclusion, for the last thing she desired was
that David's calflove should harden into any real purpose.
Elizabeth--sweet-hearted below the careless selfishness of a temper
which it never occurred to her must be controlled--was a most kissable
young creature to her elders, and Mrs. Richie was heartily fond of her;
but all the same she did not want a daughter-in-law with a temper!
Elizabeth, on her part, repelled by David's mother's unattainable
perfections, never allowed the older woman to feel intimate with her.
That first meeting so many years ago, when they had each recoiled from
the other, seemed to have left a gulf between them, which had never
quite closed up. So Mrs. Richie was just as well pleased that in the
next few years David, for one reason or another, did not see his old
neighbor very often. By the time he was twenty-four, and well along in
his course at the medical school, she had almost forgotten her vague
apprehensions. The pause in the intimacy of the mother and son--the
inevitable pause that comes between the boy's seventeenth and twentieth
years--had ended, and David and his mother were frank and confidential
friends again; yet, though she did not know it, one door was still
closed between them: "He's forgotten all about it," Mrs. Richie told
herself comfortably; and never guessed that in silence he remembered.
Of course David's boyish idea of honor was no longer subject to the
claim of friendship, for Blair had entirely recovered from his first
passion. The only thing he feared now was his own unworth. After all,
what had a dumb fellow like himself to offer such a radiant being?
For indeed she was radiant. The girl he had known nearly all his life,
impetuous, devoid of self-consciousness, giving her sweet, sexless love
with both generous hands, had vanished with the old frank days of
dropping an uninvited head on a boy's shoulder. Now, though she was
still impetuous, still unconscious of self, she was glowing with
womanhood, and ready to be loved. She was not beautiful, except in so
far as she was young, for youth is always beautiful; she was tall, of a
sweet and delicate thinness, and with the faint coloring of a
blush-rose; her dimple was exquisite; her brows were straight and fine,
shading eyes wonderfully star-like, but often stormy--eyes of clear,
dark amber, which, now that David had come home, were full of dreams.
Before her joyous personality, no wonder poor inarticulate David was
torn with apprehensions! He did not share them with his mother, who,
with more or less misgiving, began to guess how things were for
herself; he knew instinctively that Mrs. Richie's gentle, orderly mind
could not possibly understand Elizabeth, still less appreciate the
peculiar charm to his inherent reasonableness of her sweet, stormy,
undisciplined temperament. Nannie Maitland could not understand either,
and yet it was to Nannie--kind, literal little Nannie, who never
understood anything abstract, that David revealed his heart. She was
intensely sympathetic, and having long ago relinquished the
sister-in-law dream, encouraged him to rave about Elizabeth to his
heart's content; in fact, for at least a year before Mrs. Maitland had
evolved that "sensible arrangement" for her stepdaughter, David,
whenever he was at home, used to go to see Nannie simply to pour out
his hopes or his dismays. It was mostly dismays, for it seemed to him
that Elizabeth was as uncertain as the wind! "She does--she doesn't,"
he used to say to himself; and then he would question Nannie, who,
having received certain confidences from the other side, would reassure
him so warmly that he would take heart again.
At the time that he finally dared to put his fate to the touch, Mrs.
Maitland's match-making intentions for Nannie had reached a point where
she had made up her mind to put the matter through without any more
delay. "I'll speak to Mrs. Richie about it, and get the thing settled,"
she said to herself; "no use dawdling along this way!" But just the day
before she found time to speak to Mrs. Richie--it was in David's
midwinter recess--something happened.
Elizabeth had accepted--not too eagerly, of course--an invitation to
walk with him; and off they went, down Sandusky Street to the river and
across the old covered bridge. They stopped to say how do you do to
Mrs. Todd, who was peering out from behind the scarlet geraniums in the
window of the "saloon." Elizabeth took the usual suggestive joke about
a "pretty pair" with a little hauteur, but David beamed, and as he left
the room he squeezed Mrs. Todd suddenly round her fat waist, which made
her squeak but pleased her very much. "Made for each other!" she
whispered wheezily; and David slipped a bill into her hand through
sheer joy.
"Better have some ice-cream," the old lady wheedled; "such hot blood
needs cooling."
"Oh, Mrs. Todd, _she_ is so cool, I don't need ice-cream," the young
fellow mourned in her motherly ear.
"Get out with ye! Ain't you got eyes? She's waitin' to eat you up,--and
starvin' for ye!" And David hurried after Elizabeth, who had reached
the toll-gate and was waiting, if not to eat him, at any rate for his
company.
"She's a dear old soul!" he said joyfully.
"I believe you gave her a kiss," Elizabeth declared.
"I gave her a hug. She said things I liked!"
Elizabeth, guessing what the things might have been, swerved away from
the subject, and murmured how pretty the country looked. There had been
a snow-storm the night before, and the fields were glistening, unbroken
sheets of white; the road David chose was followed by a brook, that ran
chuckling between the agate strips of ice along its banks; here and
there a dipping branch had been caught and was held in a tinkling
crystal prison, and here and there the ice conquered the current, and
the water could be heard gurgling and complaining under its snowy
covering. David thought that all the world was beautiful,--now that
Mrs. Todd had bidden him use his eyes!
"Remember when we used to sled down this hill, Elizabeth?"
She turned her cool, glowing face toward him and nodded. "Indeed I do!
And you used to haul my sled up to the top again."
"I don't think I have forgotten anything we did."
Instantly she veered away from personalities. "Isn't it a pity Blair
dislikes Mercer so much? Nannie is dreadfully lonely without him."
"She has you; I don't see how she can be lonely."
"Oh, I don't count for anything compared to Blair." Her breath carried
quickly. The starry light was in her eyes, but he did not see it. He
was not daring to look at her.
"You count for everything to me," he said, in a constrained voice.
She was silent.
"Elizabeth...do you think you could--care? a little?"
She looked away from him without a word. David trembled; "It's all
up--" he said to himself; and even as he said it, a small, cold hand
was stretched out to him,--a hand that trembled:
"David, I am not good enough. Truly, I'm not."
The very shock of having his doubts and fears crumble so suddenly, made
him stand stock-still; he turned very white. "What!" he said, in a low
voice, "You--_care_? Oh no, you don't! You can't. I can't believe it."
Upon which Elizabeth was instantly joyous again. "Well, I won't, if you
don't want me to," she said gaily, and walked on, leaving him standing,
amazed, in the snow. Then she looked back at him over her shoulder. At
that arch and lovely look he bounded to her, stammering something, he
did not know what himself; but she laughed, glowing and scolding,
swerving over to the other side of the path. "David! We are on a public
road. Stop! Please!"
"To think of your caring," he said, almost in a whisper. His face, with
its flash of ecstasy, was like wine to her; all her soul spoke
fearlessly in her eyes: "Care? Why, David, I was only so awfully afraid
you weren't going to ask me!"
His lip trembled. He was quite speechless. But Elizabeth was bubbling
over with joy; then suddenly, her exhilaration flagged. "What will your
mother say? She doesn't like me."
"Elizabeth! she loves you! How could she help it? How could anybody
help it?"
"It's my temper," she said, sighing; "my wicked temper. Of course I
never mean anything I say, and I can't imagine why people mind; but
they do. Last week I made Cherry-pie cry. Of course she oughtn't to
have been hurt;--she knows me. You see I am really a devil, David, to
make dear, old Cherry-pie unhappy! But I don't believe I will ever lose
my temper again as long as I live. I am going to be good, like your
mother." The tears stood in her eyes. "Mrs. Richie is so simply perfect
I am sort of afraid of her. I wish she had ever been wicked, like me.
David, what shall we do if she won't consent?"
"She'll consent all right," he said, chuckling; and added with the
sweet and trusting egotism of youth: "the only thing in the world
Materna wants, you know, is my happiness. But do you suppose it would
make any difference if she didn't consent? You are for me," he said
with an abrupt solemnity that was almost harsh. "Nothing in the world
can take you from me."
And she whispered, "Nothing."
Then David, like every lover who has ever loved, cast his challenge
into the grinning face of Fate: "This is forever, Elizabeth."
"Forever, David."
On their way home, as they passed the toll-house, he left her and ran
up the path to tap on the window; when Mrs. Todd beamed at him through
the geraniums, "_I've got her!_" he cried. And the gay old voice called
back, "Glory be!"
On the bridge in the gathering dusk they stood for some time without
speaking, looking down at the river. Once or twice a passer-by glanced
at the two figures leaning there on the hand-rail, and wondered at the
foolishness of people who would stand in the cold and look at a river
full of ice; but David and Elizabeth did not see the passing world. The
hurrying water ran in a turbulent, foam-streaked flood; great sheets of
ice, rocking and grinding against one another, made a continuous soft
crash of sound. Sometimes one of them would strike the wooden casing of
a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of
ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit
that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow
with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays
of the sun,--a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the
hills,--caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden
white glitter almost from shore to shore.
"Elizabeth," David said, "I want to tell you something. I stood right
here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the evening that
Blair told me that you and he--"
"Don't!" she said, shivering.
"I won't," he told her tenderly; "you were only a child; it didn't mean
anything. Don't you suppose I understand? But I wanted you to know that
it was then, nearly eight years ago, when I was just a boy, that I
realized that _I_--" he paused.
She looked at him silently; her lip quivered and she nodded.
"And I have never changed since," he said. "I stood just here, leaning
on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under his breath;
"I didn't know what was the matter with me! I was only a cub, you know.
But"--he spoke very softly--"all of a sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman
on the raft looked up at me. There was a little baby. . . . Dear, it
was then that I knew I loved you."
At those elemental words her heart came up into her throat. She could
not speak, but suddenly she stooped and kissed the battered hand-rail
where he said his hands had rested.
David, horrified, glancing right and left in the dusk and seeing no
one, put a swift arm about her in which to whisper a single word. Then,
very softly, he kissed her cheek. For a moment she seemed to ebb away
from him; then, abruptly, like, the soft surge of a returning wave, she
sank against his breast and her lips demanded his. . . .
That night David told his mother. He had been profoundly shaken by
Elizabeth's lovely unexpected motion there in the twilight on the
bridge; it was a motion so divinely unconscious of the outside world,
that he was moved to the point of finding no words to say how moved he
was. But she had felt him tremble from head to foot when her lips
burned against his,--so she needed no words. His silence still lasted
when, after an hour next door with her, he came home and sat down on
the sofa beside his mother. He nuzzled his blond head against hers for
a moment; then slipped an arm round her waist.
"It's all right, Materna," he said, with a sort of gasp.
"What is, dear?"
"Oh, mother, the idea of asking! The only thing in the world."
"You mean--you and Elizabeth?"
"Yes," he said.
She was silent for a moment; when she spoke her voice broke a little.
"When was it, dear?"
"This afternoon," he said. And once started, he overflowed: "I can't
get my breath yet, though I've known it since a quarter past four!"
Mrs. Richie laughed, and then sighed. "David, of course I'm happy, if
you are; but--I hope she's good enough for you, dear." She felt him
stiffen against her shoulder.
"Good enough? for _me!_ Materna, she is perfect! Don't you suppose I
know? I've know her nearly all my life, and I can say she is perfect.
She is as perfect as you are; she said you were perfect this afternoon.
Yes; I never supposed I could say that any woman was as good, and
lovely, and pure, as you--"
"David, _please_ don't say such things."
David was not listening. "But I can say it of Elizabeth! Oh, what a
lucky fellow I am! I always thought Blair would get her. He's such a
mighty good fellow,--and so darned good-looking, confound him!" David
ruminated affectionately. "And he can talk; he's not bottled up, like
me. To think she would look at me, when she could have had him,--or
anybody else! It seems kind of mean to cut Blair out, when he isn't
here. He hasn't seen her, you know, for about two years."
"Perhaps you would like to call it off until he gets home, and give him
a chance?"
David grinned. "No, thank you. Oh, Materna, she is, you know, really,
so--so sort of wonderful! Some time I want to talk to you about her. I
don't believe anybody quite understands Elizabeth but me. But to think
of her caring for me! To think of my having two such women to care for
me." He took her hand gently and kissed it. "Mother," he said--he spoke
with almost painful effort; "Mother, I want to tell you something. I
want to tell you, because, being what you are, you can't in the least
understand what it means; but I do want you to know: I've never kissed
any woman but you, Materna, until I kissed--_Her_."
"Oh," said Helena Richie, in a stifled voice, "don't, David, don't; I
can't bear it! And if she doesn't make you happy--"
"Make me happy?" David said. He paused; that unasked kiss burned once
more against his lips; he almost shivered at the pang of it. "Materna,"
he said hoarsely, "if she or I were to die to-night, I, at any rate,
have had happiness enough in these few hours to have made it worth
while to have lived."
"Love doesn't mean just happiness," she said.
David was silent for a moment; then he said, very gently, "You are
thinking of--of your little boy, who died?"
"Yes; and of my marriage; it was not happy, David."
He pressed his cheek against hers, without speaking. The grief of an
unhappy marriage he had long ago guessed, and in this moment of his own
happiness the remembrance of it was intolerable to him. As for the
other grief: "when I think of the baby," he said, softly, "I feel as if
that little beggar gave me my mother. I feel as if I had his job; and
if I am not a good son--" he stopped, and looked at her, smiling; but
something in her face--perhaps the pitiful effort to smile back through
the tears of an old, old sorrow, gave him a sudden, solemn thrill; the
race pain stirred in him; he seemed to see his own child, dead, in
Elizabeth's arms.
"Mother!" he said, thickly, and caught her in his arms. She felt his
heart pounding heavily in his side, but she smiled. "Yes," she said,
"my little boy gave me another son, though I didn't deserve him! No,
no, I didn't," she insisted, laying her soft mother-hand over his
protesting lips; "I used to wonder sometimes, David, why God trusted
you to me, instead of to a--a better woman--" again she checked his
outburst that God had never made a better woman! "Hush, dear, hush. But
I didn't mean that love might mean sorrow. There are worse things in
the world than sorrow," she ended, almost in a whisper.
"Yes, there are worse things," he said quietly; "of course I know that.
But they are not possible things where Elizabeth is concerned. There is
only one thing that can hurt us: Death."
"Oh, my dear, my dear! Life can hurt so much more than death! So _much_
more."
But David had nothing more to say of life and love. He retreated
abruptly to the matter of fact; he had gone to his limit, not only of
expression, but of that modesty of soul which forbids exposure of the
emotions, and is as exquisite in a young man as physical modesty is in
a girl. He was unwilling, indeed he was unable, to show even to his
mother, even, perhaps, to Elizabeth, the speechless depths that had
been stirred that afternoon by the first kiss of passion, and stirred
again that night by the sight of tears for a baby,--a baby dead for
almost a quarter of a century! He got up, thrust his hands into his
pockets, and whistled. "Heaven knows how long it will be before we can
be married! How soon do you think I can count on getting patients
enough to get married?"
Mrs. Richie laughed, though there was still a break of pain in her
voice. "My dear boy, when you leave the medical school I mean to give
you an allowance which,--"
"No, Maternal" he interrupted her; "I am going to stand on my own
legs!" David's feeling about self-support gave him a satisfaction out
of all proportion to the pain it sometimes gave his mother. She winced
now, as if his words hurt her.
"David! All that I have is yours."
"No," he said again. "I couldn't accept anything. I believe if a man
can't take care of his wife himself, he has no business to have a wife.
It's bad enough for you to be supporting a big, hungry medical student;
but I swear you sha'n't feed his wife, too. I can't be indebted, even
to you!" he ended, with the laughing cock-sureness of high-minded youth.
"Indebted? Oh, David!" she said. For a moment his words wounded her;
but when he had left her to go back to Elizabeth again, and she sat
alone by her fireside, she forgot this surface wound in some deeper
pain. David had said he had never kissed any woman but her, until he
kissed _Her_. He had said that the things that were "worse than death"
were not possible to Elizabeth. For a moment this soft mother felt a
stab of something like jealousy; then her thought went back to that
deeper pain. He had not supposed anybody could be as "perfect" as his
mother. Helena Richie cowered, as if the sacred words were whips; she
covered her face with her hands, and sat a long time without moving.
Perhaps she was thinking of a certain old letter, locked away in her
desk, and in her heart,--for she knew every word of it: "My child, your
secret belongs to your Heavenly Father. It is never to be taken from
His hands, except for one reason: to save some other child of His.
Never for any smaller reason of peace of mind to yourself."
When she lifted her bowed head from her hands the fire was out. There
were tears upon her face.