It was the very next afternoon that Mrs. Maitland found time to look
after Nannie's matrimonial interests. In the raw December twilight she
tramped muddily into Mrs. Richie's firelit parlor, which was fragrant
with hyacinths blossoming on every window-sill. Mr. Ferguson had
started them in August in his own cellar, for, as any landlord will
tell you, it is the merest matter of business to do all you can for a
good tenant. Mrs. Maitland found her superintendent and Mrs. Richie
just shaking hands on David's luck, Mrs. Richie a little tremulous, and
Robert Ferguson a little grudging, of course.
"Well, I hope they'll be happy," he said, sighing; "I suppose some
marriages _are_ happy, but--"
"Oh, Mr. Ferguson, you are delightful!" Mrs. Richie said; and it was at
that moment that Mrs. Maitland came tramping in. Instantly the large,
vital presence made the charming room seem small and crowded. There
were too many flowers, too many ornaments, too many photographs of
David. Mrs. Maitland sat down heavily on a gilded chair, that creaked
so ominously that she rose and looked at it impatiently.
"Foolish sort of furniture," she said; "give me something solid,
please, to sit on. Well, Mrs. Richie! How do you do?"
"Nannie has told you our great news?" Mrs. Richie inquired.
"Oh, so it's come to a head, has it?" Mrs. Maitland said, vastly
pleased. "Of course I knew what was in the wind, but I didn't know it
was settled. Fact is, I haven't seen her, except at breakfast, and then
I was in too much of a hurry to think of it. Well, well, nothing could
be better! That's what I came to see you about; I wanted to hurry
things along. What do you say to it, Mr. Ferguson?"
Mrs. Maitland looked positively benign. She was sitting, a little
gingerly, on the edge of the yellow damask sofa at one side of the
fireplace, her feet wide apart, her skirt pulled back over her knees,
so that her scorching petticoat was somewhat liberally displayed. Her
big shoes began to steam in the comfortable heat of a soft-coal fire
that was blazing and snapping between the brass jambs.
Mrs. Richie had drawn up a chair beside her, and Robert Ferguson stood
with his elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at them. Even to Mr.
Ferguson Mrs. Maitland's presence in the gently feminine room was
incongruous. There was a little table at the side of the sofa, and Mrs.
Maitland, thrusting out a large, gesticulating hand, swept a silver
picture-frame to the floor; in the confusion of picking it up and
putting it into a safer place the little emotional tension of the
moment vanished. Mrs. Richie winked away a tear, and laughed, and said
it was too absurd to think that their children were men and women, with
their own lives and interests and hopes--and love-affairs!
"But love-making is in the air, apparently," she said; "young Knight is
going to be married."
"What, Goose Molly's stepson?" Mrs. Maitland said. "She used to make
sheep's-eyes at--at somebody I knew. But she didn't get him! Well, I
must give the boy a present."
"And the next thing," Mrs. Richie went on, "will be Nannie's
engagement. Only it will be hard to find anybody good enough for
Nannie!"
"_Nannie_?" said Mrs. Maitland blankly. "She is to be Elizabeth's
bridesmaid, of course,--unless she gets married before our wedding
comes off. A young doctor has to have patients before he can have a
wife, so I'm afraid the chances are Elizabeth will be Nannie's
bridesmaid."
She was so full of these maternal and womanly visions that the sudden
slight rigidity of Mrs. Maitland's face did not strike her.
"Nannie has been so interested," Mrs. Richie went on. "David will
always be grateful to her for helping his cause. I don't know what he
would have done without Nannie to confide in!"
Mrs. Maitland's face relaxed. So Nannie had not been slighted? She
herself, Nannie's mother, had made a mistake; that was all. Well, she
was sorry; she wished it had been Nannie. Poor 'thing, it was lonely
for her, in that big, empty house! But these two people, patting
themselves on the back with their personal satisfaction about their
children, they must not guess her wish. There was no resentment in her
mind; it was one of the chances of business. David had chosen
Elizabeth,--more fool David! "for Nannie'll have--" Mrs. Maitland made
some rapid calculations; "but it's not my kettle of fish," she
reflected; and hoisted herself up from the low, deeply cushioned sofa.
"I hope Elizabeth will put her mind on housekeeping," she said. "A
young doctor has to get all the pork he can for his shilling! He needs
a saving wife."
"She'll have to be a saving wife, I'm afraid," Mrs. Richie said, with
rueful pride, "for that foolish boy of mine declines, if you please, to
be helped out by an allowance from me."
"Oh, he'll have more sense when he's more in love," Mrs. Maitland
assured her easily. "I never knew a man yet who would refuse honest
money when it was offered to him. Well, Mrs. Richie, with all this
marrying going on, I suppose the next thing will be you and friend
Ferguson." Even as she said it, she saw in a flash an inevitable
meaning in the words, and she gave a great guffaw of laughter. "Bless
you! I didn't mean _that_! I meant you'd be picking up a wife
somewhere, Mr. Ferguson, and Mrs. Richie, here, would be finding a
husband. But the other way would be easier, and a very sensible
arrangement."
The two victims of her peculiar sense of humor held themselves as well
as they could. Mrs. Richie reddened slightly, but looked blank. Robert
Ferguson's jaw actually dropped, but he was able to say casually that
of course it would be some time before the young people could be
married.
"Well, give my love to Elizabeth," Mrs. Maitland said: "tell her not to
jump into the river if she gets angry with David. Do you remember how
she did that in one of her furies at Blair, Mr. Ferguson?" She gave a
grunt of a laugh, and took herself off, pausing at the front door to
call back, "Don't forget my good advice, you people!"
Robert Ferguson, putting on his hat with all possible expedition, got
out of the house almost as quickly as she did. "I'd like to choke her!"
he said to himself. He felt the desire to choke Mrs. Maitland several
times that evening as he sat in his library pretending to read his
newspaper. "She ought to be ashamed of herself! Mrs. Richie will think
I have been--heaven knows what she will think!"
But the truth was, Mrs. Richie thought nothing at all; she forgot the
incident entirely. It was Robert Ferguson who did the embarrassed
thinking.
As for Mrs. Maitland, she went home through Mercer's mire and fog, her
iron face softening into almost feminine concern. She was saying to
herself that if Nannie didn't care, why, she didn't care! "But if she
hankers after him"--Mrs. Maitland's face twinged with annoyance; "if
she hankers after him, I'll make it up to her in some way. I'll give
her a good big check!" But she must make sure about the "hankering." It
would not be difficult to make sure. In these silent years together,
the strong nature had drawn the weak nature to it, as a magnet draws a
speck of iron. Nannie, timid to the point of awe, never daring even in
her thoughts to criticize the powerful personality that dominated her
daily life, nestled against it, so to speak, with perfect content.
Sarah Maitland's esthetic deficiencies which separated her so
tragically from her son, did not alienate Nannie. The fact that her
stepmother was rich, and yet lived in a poverty-stricken locality; that
the inconvenience of the old house amounted to squalor; that they were
almost completely isolated from people of their own class;--none of
these things disturbed Nannie. They were merely "Mamma's ways," that
was all there was to say about them. She was not confidential with Mrs.
Maitland, because she had nothing to confide. But if her stepmother had
ever asked any personal question, she would have been incapable of not
replying. Mrs. Maitland knew that, and proposed to satisfy herself as
to the "hankering."
Supper was on the table when she got home, and though while bolting her
food she glanced at Nannie rather keenly, she did not try to probe her
feelings. "But she looks down in the mouth," Sarah Maitland thought.
There must have been delicacy somewhere in the big nature, for she was
careful not to speak of Elizabeth's engagement before Harris, for fear
the girl might, by some involuntary tremor of lip or eyelid, betray
herself.
"I'll look in on you after supper," she said.
Nannie, with a start, said, "Oh, thank you, Mamma."
When Mrs. Maitland, with her knitting and a fistful of unopened
letters, came over to the parlor, she had also, tucked into her belt, a
check.
It had never occurred to Nannie, in all these years and with a very
liberal allowance, to mitigate her parlor. It was still a place of
mirrors, grown perhaps a little dim; of chandeliers in balloons of
brown paper-muslin, which, to be sure, had split here and there with
age, so that a glimmer of cut glass sparkled dimly through the cracks;
a place of marble-topped tables, and crimson brocade curtains dingy
with age and soot; a place where still the only human thing was
Nannie's drawing-board. She was bending over it now, copying with a
faithful pencil a little picture of a man and a maid, and a dove and a
Love. She was going to give the drawing to Elizabeth; in fact, she had
begun it several days ago with joyous anticipation of this happy
happening. But now, as she worked, her hand trembled. She had had a
letter from Blair, and all her joyousness had fled:
"_The Dean is an ass, of course; but mother'll get excited about it,
I'm afraid. Do smooth her down, if you can._"
No wonder Nannie's hand trembled!
Mrs. Maitland, putting her letters on the table, sat down heavily and
began to knit. She glanced at Nannie over her spectacles. "Better get
through with it," she said to herself. Then, aloud, "Well, Nannie, so
David and Elizabeth have made a match of it?"
For a minute Nannie's face brightened. "Yes! Isn't it fine? I'm so
pleased. David has been crazy about her ever since he was a boy."
Well! She was heart-whole! There was no doubt of that; Mrs. Maitland,
visibly relieved, dismissed from her mind the whole foolish business of
love-making. She began to read her letters, Nannie watching her
furtively. When the third letter was taken up--a letter with the seal
of the University in the upper left-hand corner of the
envelope--Blair's sister breathed quickly. Mrs. Maitland, ripping the
envelope open with a thrust of her forefinger, read it swiftly; then
again, slowly. Then she said something under her breath and struck her
fist on the table. Nannie's fingers whitened on her pencil. Sarah
Maitland got up and stood on the hearth-rug, her back to the fire.
"I'll have to go East," she said, and began to bite her forefinger.
"Oh, Mamma," Nannie broke out, "I am sure there isn't anything really
wrong. Perhaps he has been--a little foolish. Men are foolish in
college. David got into hot water lots of times. But Blair hasn't done
anything really bad, and--"
Mrs. Maitland gave her a somber look. "He wrote to you, did he?" she
said. And Nannie realized that she had not advanced her brother's
cause. Mrs. Maitland picked up her letters and began to sort them out.
"When is he going to grow up?" she said. "He's twenty-four; and he's
been dawdling round at college for the last two years! He's not bad; he
hasn't stuff enough in him to be bad. He is just lazy and useless; and
he's had every chance young man could have!"
"Mamma!" Nannie protested, "it isn't fair to speak that way of Blair,
and it isn't true, not a word of it!" Nannie, the 'fraid-cat of twenty
years ago,--afraid still of thunder-storms and the dark and Sarah
Maitland, and what not,--Nannie, when it came to defending Blair, had
all the audacious courage of love. "He is not lazy, he is not useless;
he is--he is--" Nannie stammered with angry distress; "he is dear, and
good, and kind, and never did any harm in his life. Never! It's
perfectly dreadful, Mamma, for you to say such things about him!"
"Well, well!" said Sarah Maitland, lifting an amused eyebrow. It was as
if a humming-bird had attacked a steel billet. Her face softened into
pleased affection. "Well, stick up for him," she said; "I like it in
you, my dear, though what you say is foolish enough. You remind me of
your mother. But your brother has brains. Yes, I'll say that for
him,--he's like me; he has brains. That's why I'm so out of patience
with him," she ended, lapsing into moody displeasure again. "If he was
a fool, I wouldn't mind his behaving like a fool. But he has brains."
Then she said, briefly, "'Night," and tramped off to the dining room.
The next morning when Nannie, a little pale from a worried night, came
down to breakfast, her stepmother's place was empty.
"Yes," Harris explained; "she went off at twelve, Miss Nannie. She
didn't let on where. She said you'd know."
"I know," poor Nannie said, and turned paler than ever.