After his first spasm of angry disgust, when he declared he would go
East the next morning, Blair's fancy for "hanging round Mercer"
hardened into purpose; but he did not "hang round" his mother's house.
"The hotel is pretty bad," he told Nannie, "but it's better than
_this_." So he took the most expensive suite in the big, dark old River
House that in those days was Mercer's best hotel. Its blackened facade
and the Doric columns of its entrance gave it a certain exterior
dignity; and its interior comfort, combined with the reviving
associations of youth, lengthened Blair's two or three days to a week,
then to a fortnight.
The day after that distressing interview with his mother, he went gaily
round to Mrs. Richie's to pound David on the back, and say
"Congratulations, old fellow! Why in thunder," he complained, "didn't I
come back before? You've cut me out, you villain!"
David grinned.
"'Before the devil could come back,
The angel had the inside track,'"
he admitted.
"Well, if you'll take my advice, you won't be too angelic," Blair said
a little dryly. "She always had a touch of the other thing in her, you
know."
"You think I'd better cultivate a few vices?" David inquired amiably;
"I'm obliged for an example, anyhow!"
But Blair did not keep up the chaffing. The atmosphere of Mrs. Richie's
house dominated him as completely as when he was a boy. He looked at
her serene face, her simple, feminine parlor, the books and flowers and
pictures,--and thought of his mother and his mother's house. Then,
somehow, he was ashamed of his thoughts, because this dear lady said in
her gentle way:
"How happy your mother must be to have you at home again, Blair. You
won't rush right off and leave us, will you?"
"Well," he hesitated, "of course I don't want to"--he was surprised at
the ring of truth in his voice; "but I am going to paint this summer. I
am going to be in one of the studios in Paris."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said simply. And Blair had an instant of
uncertainty, although a moment before his "painting" had seemed to him
necessary, because it facilitated another summer away from home; and
after the interview with his mother's general manager, a summer away
from home was more than ever desirable.
Mr. Ferguson had handed over the five thousand dollars, and then freed
his mind. Blair listened. He heard that he was a sucker, that he was a
poor stick, that he wasn't fit to black his mother's boots. "They need
it," he said, chuckling; and Robert Ferguson nearly burst with anger!
Yet when the check was on its way to New York, and the picture had been
shipped to Mercer, Blair still lingered at the River House. The idea of
"renewing their youth" had appealed to all four friends. In the next
two or three weeks they were constantly together at either one house or
the other, or at some outside rendezvous arranged by Blair--a drive
down to Willis's, a theater party and supper, a moonlight walk. Once
David suggested "ice-cream at Mrs. Todd's." But this fell through;
Blair said that even his sentimentality could not face the blue paper
roses, and when David urged that the blue paper roses were part of the
fun, Blair said, "Well, _I'll_ match you for it. All important
decisions ought to be left to chance, to avoid the burden of
responsibility!" A pitched penny favored Blair, and Mrs. Todd did not
see the 'handsome couples.' It was at the end of the first week, when
they were all dining with Mrs. Richie--the evening meal was beginning
to be called dinner nowadays in Mercer; that Mrs. Richie's soft eyes,
which took duty and energy and ability so sweetly and trustingly for
granted,--Mrs. Richie's believing eyes did for Blair what Robert
Ferguson's vociferating truthfulness had not been able to accomplish.
It was after dinner, and she and Blair had gone into the little
plant-room, where the air was sweet with hyacinths and the moist
greenness of ferns.
"Blair," she said, putting her soft hand on his arm; "I want to say
something. You won't mind?"
"Mind anything _you_ say? I should think not!"
"It is only that I want you to know that, when the time comes, I shall
think it very fine in you, with your tastes and temperament, to buckle
down at the Works. I shall admire you very much then, Blair."
He gave her a droll look. "Alas, dear Mrs. Richie," he began; but she
interrupted him.
"Your mother will be so proud and happy when you get to work; and I
wanted you to know that I, too--"
He took her hand from his arm and lifted it to his lips; there was a
courtliness about Blair, and a certain gravity, which at moments gave
him positive distinction. "If there is any good in me," he said, "you
would bring it out." Then he smiled. "But probably there isn't any."
"Nonsense!" she cried, and hesitated; he saw that her leaf-brown eyes
were wet. "You must make your life worth while, Blair. You must! It
would be such a dreadful failure if you didn't do anything but enjoy
yourself." He was keenly touched. He did not kiss her hand again; he
just put his arm around her, as David might have done, and gave her a
hug. "Mrs. Richie! I--I _will_ brace up!"
"You are a dear fellow," she said, and kissed him. Then they went back
to the other three, to find Elizabeth in a gale of teasing merriment
because, she said, David was so "terribly talkative"!
"He has sat there like a bump on a log for fifteen minutes," she
complained. "Say something, dummy!" she commanded.
David only chuckled, and pulled Blair into a corner to talk. "You girls
keep on your own side; don't interrupt serious conversation," he said.
"Blair, I want to ask you--" And in a minute the two young men were
deep in their own affairs. It was amusing to see how quickly all four
of them fell back into the comfortable commonplace of old friendship,
the men roaring over some college reminiscences, and the two girls
grumbling at being left out. "Really," said Mrs. Richie, "I should
think none of you were more than fifteen!"
That night, when he took his sister home, Blair was very silent. Her
little trickle of talk about David and Elizabeth was apparently
unheard. As they turned into their own street, the full moon, just
rising out of the river mists, suddenly flooded the waste-lands beyond
the Works; the gaunt outlines of the Foundry were touched with ethereal
silver, and the Maitland house, looming up in a great black mass, made
a gulf of shadow that drowned the dooryard and spread half-way across
the squalid street. Beyond the shadow, Shantytown, in the quiet
splendor of the moon, seemed as intangible as a dream.
"Beautiful!" Blair said, involuntarily. He stood for a silent moment,
drinking the beauty like wine, perhaps it was the exhilaration of it
that made him say abruptly: "Perhaps I'll not go abroad. Perhaps I'll
pitch in."
Nannie fairly jumped with astonishment. "Blair! You mean to go into the
Works? This summer? Oh, how pleased Mamma would be! It would be
perfectly splendid. _Oh_!" Nannie gave his arm a speechless squeeze.
"If I do, it will be because Mrs. Richie bolstered me up. Of course I
would hate it like the devil; but perhaps it's the decent thing to do?
Oh, well; don't say anything about it. I haven't made up my mind--this
is an awful place!" he said, with a shiver, looking across at
Shantytown and remembering what was hidden under the glamor of the
moon. "The smell of it! Democracy is well enough, Nancy--until you
smell it."
"But you could live at the hotel," Nannie reminded him, as he pulled
out his latch-key.
"You bet I would," her brother said, laughing. "My dear, not even your
society could reconcile me to the slums. But I don't know whether I can
screw myself up to the Works, anyhow. David won't be in town, and that
would be a nuisance. Well, I'll think it over; but if I do stay, I tell
you what it is!--you two girls will have to make things mighty
agreeable, or I'll clear out."
He did think it over; but Blair had never been taught the one regal
word of life, he had never learned to say "I _ought_." Therefore it
needed more talks with Mrs. Richie, more days with Elizabeth--David,
confound him! wouldn't come, because he had to pack, but Nannie tagged
on behind; it needed the "bolstering up" of much approval on the part
of the onlookers, and much self-approval, too, before the screwing-up
process reached a point where he went into his mother's office in the
Works and told her that if she was ready to take him on, he was ready
to go to work.
Mrs. Maitland was absolutely dumb with happiness. He wanted to go to
work! He asked to be taken on! "What do you say _now_, friend
Ferguson?" she jeered; "you thought he was going to play at his
painting for another year, and you wanted me to put his nose to the
grindstone, and make him earn the money to pay for that fool picture.
Isn't it better to have him come to it of his own accord? I'd pay for
ten pictures, if they made him want to go to work. As for his painting,
it will be his father over again. My husband had his fancies about it,
too, but he gave it all up when he married me; marriage always gives a
man common sense,--marriage and business. That's how it's going to be
with Blair," she ended complacently. "Blair has brains; I've always
said so."
Robert Ferguson did not deny the brains, but he was as astonished as
she.
"I believe," he challenged Mrs. Richie, "_you_ put him up to it? You
always could wind that boy round your finger."
"I did talk to him," she confessed; it was their last interview, for
she and David were starting East that night, and Mr. Ferguson had come
in to say good-by. "I talked to him--a little. Mrs. Maitland's
disappointment about him went to my heart. Besides, I am very fond of
Blair; there is a great deal of good in him. You are prejudiced."
"No I'm not. I admit that as his mother says, 'he's no fool'; but that
only makes his dilly-dallying so much the worse. Still, I believe that
if she were to lose all her money, and he were to fall very much in
love and be refused, he might amount to something. But it would need
both things to make a man of him."
Robert Ferguson sighed, and Mrs. Richie left the subject of the
curative effect of unsuccessful love, with nervous haste. "I am going
to charge Elizabeth and Nannie to do all they can to make it pleasant
for him, so that he won't find the Works too terrible," she said. At
which reflection upon the Works, Mr. Ferguson barked so fiercely that
she felt quite at ease with him. But his barking did not prevent her
from telling the girls that business would be very hard for Blair, and
they must cheer him up: "Do try to amuse him! You know it is going to
be very stupid for him in Mercer."
Nannie, of course, needed no urging; as for Elizabeth, she was a little
contemptuous. Oh yes; she would do what she could, she said. "Of
course, I'm awfully fond of Blair, but--"
The fact was, she was contrasting in her own mind the man who had to be
"amused" to keep him at his work, with David--"working himself to
death!" she told Nannie, proudly. And Nannie, quick to feel the slur in
her words, said:
"Yes, but it is quite different with Blair. Blair doesn't _have_ to do
anything, you know."
Still, thanks to Mrs. Richie, he was at least going to pretend to do
something. And so, at a ridiculously high salary, he entered, as he
told Elizabeth humorously, "upon his career." The only thing he did to
make life more tolerable for himself was to live in the hotel instead
of in his mother's house. But it was characteristic of him that he left
the wonderful old canvas--the "fourteen by eighteen inch" picture,
hanging on the wall in Nannie's parlor. "You ought to have something
fit for a civilized eye to rest upon," he told her, "and I can see it
when I come to see you." If his permanent departure for the River House
wounded his mother, she made no protest; she only lifted a pleased
eyebrow when he dropped in to supper, which, she noticed, he was apt to
do whenever Elizabeth happened to take tea with Nannie. When he did
come, Sarah Maitland used to look about the dining-room table, with its
thick earthenware dishes--the last of the old Canton service had found
its way to the ash-barrel; she used to glance at the three young people
with warm satisfaction. "Like old times!" she would say kindly; "only
needs David to make it complete."
Mrs. Maitland was sixty-two that spring, but there was no stoop of the
big shoulders, no sign of that settling and shrinking that age brings.
She was at the full tide of her vigor, and her happiness in having her
son beside her in the passion of her life, which was second only to her
passion for him, showed itself in clumsy efforts to flaunt her
contentment before her world. Every morning, with varying
unpunctuality, Blair came into her office at the Works where she had
had a desk placed for him. He was present, because she insisted that he
should be, at the regular conferences which she held with the heads of
departments. She made a pretense of asking his advice, which was as
amusing to Mr. Ferguson and the under-superintendents as it was
tiresome to Blair. For after his first exhilaration in responding to
Mrs. Richie's high belief in him, the mere doing of duty began
gradually to pall. Her belief helped him through the first four or five
months, then the whole thing became a bore. His work was ludicrously
perfunctory, and his listlessness when in the office was apparent to
everybody. At the bottom of her heart, Sarah Maitland must have known
that it was all a farce. Blair was worth nothing to the business; his
only relation to it was the weekly drawing of an unearned "salary."
Perhaps if Mrs. Richie had been in Mercer, to make again and again the
appeal of confident expectation, that little feeble sense of duty which
had started him upon his "career," might have struck a root down
through feeling, into the rock-bed of character. But as it was, not
even the girls' obedience to her order, "to amuse Blair," made up for
the withdrawal of her own sustaining inspiration.
But at least Nannie and Elizabeth kept him fairly contented out of
business hours; and so long as he was contented, things were smooth
between him and his mother. There was, as Blair expressed it, "only one
rumpus" that whole summer, and it was a very mild one, caused by the
fact that he did not go to church. On those hot July Sunday mornings,
his mother in black silk, and Nannie in thin lawn, sat in the family
pew, fanning themselves, and waiting; Nannie, constantly turning to
look down the aisle; Sarah Maitland intent for a familiar step and a
hand upon the little baize-lined door of the pew. The "rumpus" came
when, on the third Sunday, Blair was called to account.
It was after supper, in the hot dusk in Nannie's parlor; Elizabeth was
there, and the two girls, in white dresses, were fanning themselves
languidly; Blair, at the piano, was playing the Largo, with much
feeling. The windows were open. It was too warm for lamps, and the room
was lighted only by the occasional roar of flames, breaking fan-like
from the tops of the stacks in the Yards. Suddenly, in the midst of
their idle talk, Mrs. Maitland came in; she paused for a moment before
the dark oblong of canvas on the wall beside the door. Of course, in
the half-light, the little dim Mother of God--immortal
maternity!--could scarcely be seen.
"Umph," she said, "a dirty piece of canvas, at about twenty dollars a
square inch!" No one spoke. "Let's see;" she calculated;--"ore is $10 a
ton; 20 tons to a car; say one locomotive hauls 25 cars. Well, there
you have it: a trainload of iron ore, to pay for _this_!" she snapped a
thumb and finger against the canvas. Blair jumped--then ran his right
hand up the keyboard in a furious arpeggio. But he said nothing. Mrs.
Maitland, moving away from the picture, blew out her lips in a loud
sigh. "Well," she said; "tastes differ, as the old woman said when she
kissed her cow."
Still no one spoke, but Elizabeth rose to offer her a chair. "No," she
said, coming over and resting an elbow on the mantelpiece, "I won't sit
down. I'm going in a minute."
As she stood there, unrest spread about her as rings from a falling
stone spread on the surface of a pool. Blair yawned, and got up from
the piano; Elizabeth fidgeted; Nannie began to talk nervously.
"Blair," said his mother, her strident voice over-riding the girls'
chatter, "why don't you come to church?"
His answer was perfectly unevasive and entirely good-natured. "Well,
for one thing, I don't believe the things the church teaches."
"What do you believe?" she demanded. And he answered carelessly, that
really, he hardly knew.
It was, of course, the old difference of the generations; but it was
more marked because these two generations had never spoken the same
language, therefore quiet, sympathetic disagreement was impossible. It
was impossible, too, because the actual fact was that neither her
belief nor his disbelief were integral to their lives. Her creed was a
barbarous anthropomorphism, which had created an offended and puerile
god--a god of foreign missions and arid church-going and eternal
damnation. The fear of her god (such as he was) would, no doubt, have
protected her against certain physical temptations, to which, as it
happened, her temperament never inclined; but he had never safeguarded
her from the temptation of cutthroat competition, or even of business
shrewdness which her lawyer showed her how to make legal. Blair, on the
contrary, had long ago discarded the naive brutalities of
Presbyterianism; church-going bored him, and he was not interested in
saving souls in Africa. But, like most of us--like his mother, in fact,
he had a god of his own, a god who might have safeguarded him against
certain intellectual temptations; cheating at cards, or telling the
truth, if the truth would compromise a woman. But as he had no desire
to cheat at cards, and the women whom he might have compromised did not
need to be lied about, his god was of as little practical value to him
as his mother's was to her. So they were neither of them speaking of
realities when Mrs. Maitland said: "What do you believe? What have you
got instead of God?"
"Honor," Blair said promptly. "What do you mean by honor?" she said,
impatiently.
"Well," her son reflected, "there are things a man simply can't do;
that's all. And that's honor, don't you know. Of course, religion is
supposed to keep you from doing things, too. But there's this
difference: religion, if you pick pockets--I speak metaphorically;
threatens you with hell. Honor threatens you with yourself." As he
spoke he frowned, as if a disagreeable idea had occurred to him.
His mother frowned, too. That hell and a man's self might be the same
thing had never struck Sarah Maitland. She did not understand what he
meant, and feeling herself at a disadvantage, retaliated with the
reproof she might have administered to a boy of fifteen: "You don't
know what you are talking about!"
The man of twenty-five laughed lazily. "Your religion is very amusing,
my dear mother."
Her face darkened. She took her elbow from the mantelpiece, and seemed
uncertain what to do. Blair sprang to open the door, but she made an
irritated gesture. "I know how to open doors," she said. She threw a
brief "good-night" to Elizabeth, and turned a cheek to Nannie for the
kiss that had fallen there, soft as a little feather, in all the nights
of all the years they had lived together. "'Night, Blair," she said
shortly; then hesitated, her hand on the door-knob. There was an
instant when the command _"Go to church!"_ trembled upon her lips, but
it was not spoken. "I advise you," she said roughly, "to get over your
conceit, and try to get some religion into you. Your father and your
grandfather didn't think they could get along without it; they went to
church! But you evidently think you are so much better than they were
that you can stay away."
The door slammed behind her. Blair whistled. "Poor dear mother!" he
sighed; and turned round to listen to the two girls. "Can you be ready
to start on the first?" Elizabeth was asking Nannie, evidently trying
to cover up the awkwardness of that angry exit.
"Start where?" Blair asked.
"Why, East! You know. I told you ages ago," Nannie explained.
"Elizabeth and I are going to stay with Mrs. Richie at the seashore."
"You never said a word about it," Blair said disgustedly. His annoyance
knew no disguise. "I call it pretty shabby for you two to go off!
What's going to happen to me?"
"Business, Blair, business!" Elizabeth mocked. But Nannie was plainly
conscience-stricken. "I'll not go, if you'd rather I didn't, Blair."
"Nonsense!" her brother said shortly, "of course you must go, but--" He
did not finish his thought, whatever it was; he went back to the piano
and began to drum idly. His face was sharply annoyed. That definition
of his god which he had made to his mother, had aroused a nameless
uneasiness. It occurred to him that perhaps he was "picking a pocket,"
in finding such emphatic satisfaction in Elizabeth's society. Now,
abruptly, at the news of her approaching absence, the uneasiness
sharpened into faintly recognizable outlines.
He struck a jarring chord on the piano, and told himself not to be a
fool. "She's mighty good fun. Of course I shall miss her or any other
girl, in this Godforsaken hole! That's all it amounts to. Anyhow, she's
dead in love with David." Sitting there in the hot dusk, listening to
the voices of the girls, Blair felt suddenly irritated with David.
"Darn him, why does he go off and leave her in this way? Not but what
it is all right so far as I am concerned; only--" Then, wordlessly, his
god must have accused him, for he winced. "I am _not_, not in the
least!" he said. The denial confessed him to himself, and there was an
angry bang of discordant octaves. The two girls called out in dismay.
"Oh, _do_ stop!" Elizabeth said. Blair got up from the piano-stool and
came over to them silently. His thoughts were in clamoring confusion.
"I am _not_," he said again to himself. "I like her, but that's all."
There was a look of actual panic on his lazily charming face. He
glanced at Elizabeth, who, her head on Nannie's shoulder, was humming
softly: "'Oh, won't it be joyful--joyful-joyful--'" and clenched his
hands.
He was very silent as he walked home with her that night. When they
reached her door, Elizabeth looked up at the closed shutters of Mrs.
Richie's house, and sighed. "How dreary a closed house looks!" she
said. "I almost wish Uncle would rent it, but he won't. _I_ think he is
keeping it for Mrs. Richie to live in when David and I settle down in
Philadelphia."
Blair was apparently not interested in Mrs. Richie's future. "I wish,"
he said, "that I'd gone to Europe this summer."
"Well, that's polite, considering that Nannie and I have spent our time
making it agreeable for you."
"I stayed in Mercer because I thought I'd like a summer with Nannie,"
he defended himself; he was just turning away at the foot of the steps,
but he stopped and called back: "with Nannie-_and you."_
Elizabeth, from the open door, looked after him with frank
astonishment. "How long since Nannie and I have been so much
appreciated?"
"I think I began to appreciate you a good while ago, Elizabeth," he
said, significantly; but she did not hear him. "Perhaps it's just as
well she's going," he told himself, as he went slowly back to the
hotel. "Not that I'm smitten; but I might be. I can see that I might
be, if I should let myself go." But he was confident that allegiance to
his god would keep him from ever letting himself go.
The girls went East that week, and when they did, Blair took no more
meals in the office-dining-room.
It was a very happy time that the inland girls spent with Mrs. Richie,
in her small house on the Jersey shore. It happened that neither of
them had ever seen the ocean, and their first glimpse of it was a great
experience. Added to that was the experience, new to both of them, of
daily companionship with a serene nature. Mrs. Richie was always a
little remote, a little inclined to keep people at arm's-length; there
were undercurrents of sadness in her talk, and she was perhaps rather
absorbed in her own supreme affair, maternal love. Also, her calm
outlook upon heavenly horizons made the affairs of the girls seem
sometimes disconcertingly small, and to realize the smallness of one's
affairs is in itself an experience to youth. But in spite of the
ultimate reserves they felt in her, Mrs. Richie was sympathetic, and
full of soft gaieties, with endless patience for people and events.
Elizabeth's old uneasy dislike of her had long since yielded to the
fact that she was David's mother, and so must be, and in theory was,
loved. But the love was really only a faint awe at what she still
called "perfection"; and during the two months of living under the same
roof with her, Elizabeth felt at times a resentful consciousness that
Mrs. Richie was afraid of that ungovernable temper, which, the girl
used to say, impatiently, "never hurts anybody but myself!" Like most
high-tempered people, Elizabeth, though penitent and more or less
mortified by her outbursts of fury, was always a little astonished when
any one took them seriously; and Mrs. Richie took them very seriously.
Nannie, being far simpler than Elizabeth, was less impressed by Mrs.
Richie than by her surroundings;--the ocean, the whole gamut of marine
sights and happenings; Mrs. Richie's housekeeping; the delicate food
and serving (what would Harris have thought of that table!)-all these
things, as well as David's fortnightly visits, and Elizabeth's ardors
and gay coldnesses, were delights to Nannie. Both girls had an
absorbingly good time, and when the last day of the last week finally
arrived, and Mr. Robert Ferguson appeared to escort them home, they
were both of them distinctly doleful.
"Every perfect thing stops!" Elizabeth sighed to David. They had left
the porch, and gone down on to the sands flooded with moonlight and
silence. The evening was very still and warm, and the full blue pour of
the moon made everything softly unreal, except the glittering path of
light crossing the breathing, black expanse of water. David had
hesitated when she had suggested leaving the others and coming down
here by themselves,--then he had looked at Nannie, sitting between
Robert Ferguson and his mother, and seemed to reassure himself; but he
was careful to choose a place on the beach where he could keep an eye
on the porch. He was talking to Elizabeth in his anxious way, about his
work, and how soon his income would be large enough for them to marry.
"The minus sign expresses it now," he said; "I could kick myself when I
think that, at twenty-six, my mother has to pay my washwoman!" Their
engagement had continued to accentuate the difference in the
development of these two; David's manhood was more and more of the
mind; Elizabeth's womanhood was most exquisitely of the body. When he
spoke of his shame in being supported by his mother, she leaned her
cheek on his shoulder, careless of the three spectators on the porch,
and said softly, "David, I love you so that I would like to scrub
floors for you." He laughed; "I wouldn't like to have you scrub floors,
thank you! Why in thunder don't I get ahead faster," he sighed. Then he
told her that the older men in the profession were "so darned mean,
even the big fellows, 'way up," that they kept on practising when they
could just as well sit back on their hind legs and do nothing, and give
the younger men a chance.
"They are nothing but money-grabbers," Elizabeth agreed, burning with
indignation at all successful physicians. "But David, we can live on
very little. Corn-beef is very cheap, Cherry-pie says. So's liver."
Up on the porch the conversation was quite as practical as it was down
by the moonlit water:
"Elizabeth is to have a little bit of money handed over to her on her
next birthday," Mr. Ferguson was saying; then he twitched the black
ribbon of his glasses and brought them tumbling from his nose; "it's an
inheritance from her father."
"Oh, how exciting!" said Nannie. "Will it make it possible for them to
be married any sooner?"
"They can't marry on the interest on it," he said, with his meager
laugh; "it's only a nest-egg."
Mrs. Richie sighed. "Well, of course they must be prudent, but I am
sorry to have them wait. It will be some time before David's practice
is enough for them to marry on. He is so funny in planning their
housekeeping expenses," she said, with that mother-laugh of mockery and
love. "You should hear the economies they propose!" And she told him
some of them. "They make endless calculations as to how little they can
possibly live on. You would never suppose they _could_ be so ignorant
as to the cost of things! Of course I enlighten them when they deign to
consult me. I do wish David would let me give him enough to get married
on," she ended, a little impatiently.
"I think he's right not to," Robert Ferguson said.
"David is so queer about money," Nannie commented; and rose, saying she
wanted to go indoors to the lamplight and her book.
"Pity Blair hasn't some of David's 'queerness,'" Mr. Ferguson barked,
when she had vanished into the house.
Mrs. Richie looked after her uneasily, missing her protecting presence.
But in Mr. Ferguson's matter-of-fact talk he seemed just the same
harsh, kind, unsentimental neighbor of the last seventeen years; "he's
forgotten his foolishness," she thought, and resigned herself,
comfortably, to Nannie's absence. "Does Elizabeth know about the
legacy?" she asked.
"No, she hasn't an idea of it. I was bound that the expectation of
money shouldn't spoil her."
"Well," she jeered at him, "I do hope you are satisfied _now_, that she
is not spoiled by money or anything else! How afraid you were to let
yourself really love the child--poor little Elizabeth!"
"I had reason," he insisted doggedly. "Life had played a trick on me
once, and I made up my mind not to build on anybody again, until I was
sure of them." Then, without looking at her, he said, as if following
out some line of thought, "I hope you have come to feel that you will
marry me, Mrs. Richie?"
"_Oh!_" she said, in dismay.
"I don't see why you can't make up your mind to it," he continued,
frowning; "I know"--he stopped, and put on his glasses carefully with
both hands--"I know I am a bear, but--"
"You are not!"
"Don't interrupt. I am. But not at heart. Listen to me, at my age,
talking about 'hearts'!" They both laughed, and then Mr. Ferguson gave
a snort of impatience. "Look at those two youngsters down there,
engaged to be married, and swearing by the moon that nobody ever loved
as they do. How absurd it is! A man has to be fifty before he knows
enough about love to get married."
"Nonsense!"
"I cannot take youth seriously," he ruminated; "its behavior, yes; that
may be serious enough! Youth is always firing the Ephesian dome; but
youth itself, and its opinions, always seem to me a little ridiculous.
Yet those two infants seem to think that they have discovered love!
Well," he interrupted himself, in sudden somber memory, "I felt that
way once myself. And yet _now_, I know--"
Mrs. Richie said hurriedly something about its being too damp for
Elizabeth on the sand. "Do call them in!"
He laughed. "No; you don't need 'em. I won't say any more--to-night."
"Here they come!" Mrs. Richie said in a relieved voice.
A minute before, David, looking up at the porch, and discovering
Nannie's absence, had said, "Let's go in." "Oh, must we?" Elizabeth
said, reluctantly. "I'd so much rather sit down here and have you kiss
me." But she came, perforce, for David, in his anxiety not to leave his
mother alone with Mr. Ferguson, was already halfway up the beach.
"Do tell Elizabeth about the money now," Mrs. Richie said.
"I will," said Robert Ferguson; but added, under his breath, "I sha'n't
give up, you know." Mrs. Richie was careful not to hear him.
"Elizabeth!" she said, eagerly. "Your uncle has some news for you." And
Mr. Ferguson told his niece briefly, that on her birthday in December
she would come into possession of some money left her by her father.
"Don't get up your expectations, it's not much," he said, charily, "but
it's something to start on."
"Oh, Uncle! how splendid!" she said, and caught David's hand in both of
hers. "David!"--her face was radiantly unconscious of the presence of
the others: "perhaps we needn't wait two years?"
"I'm afraid it won't make much difference." David spoke rather grimly;
"I must be able to buy your shoestrings myself, you know, before we can
be married."
Elizabeth dropped his hand, and the dimple straightened in her cheek.
Mrs. Richie smiled at her. "Young people have to be prudent, dear
child."
"How much money shall I have, Uncle?" Elizabeth asked coldly.
He told her. "Not a fortune; but David needn't worry about your
shoestrings."
"Yes, I will," he broke in, with a laugh. "She'll have to go barefoot,
if I can't get 'em for her!"
Elizabeth exclaimed, with angry impatience, and Robert Ferguson,
chuckling, struck him lightly on the shoulder. "Look out you don't fall
over backward trying to stand up straight!" he said.
The possibility of an earlier wedding-day was not referred to again.
The next morning they all went up to town together in the train, and
Elizabeth, who had recovered from her momentary displeasure, did no
more than cast glowing looks at David--lovely, melting looks of
delicate passion, as virginal as an opening lily--looks that said, "I
wish we did not have to wait!" For her part, she would have been glad
"to go barefoot," if only they might the sooner tread the path of life
together.
When they got into Mercer, late in the evening, who should meet them at
the station but Blair. Robert Ferguson, with obvious relief,
immediately handed his charges over to the young man with a hurried
explanation that he must see some one on business before going to his
own house. "Take the girls home, will you, Blair?" Blair said that that
was what he was there for. His method of taking them home was to put
Nannie into one carriage, and get into another with Elizabeth, who, a
little surprised, asked where Nannie was.
"It would delay you to go round to our house first," Blair explained.
"You forget we live in the slums. And Nannie's in a hurry, so I sent
her directly home. She doesn't mind going by herself, you know. Look
here, you two girls have been away an abominably long time! I've been
terribly lonely--without Nannie."
He had indeed been lonely "without Nannie." In these empty, meaningless
weeks at the Works, Blair Maitland had suddenly stumbled against the
negations of life. Hitherto, he had known only the easy and delightful
assents of Fate; this was his first experience with the inexorable
_No_. A week after the girls went East, he admitted to himself that,
had David been out of the way, he would undoubtedly have fallen in love
with Elizabeth. "As it is, of course I haven't," he declared. Night
after night in those next weeks, as he idled moodily about Mercer's
streets, or, lounging across the bridge, leaned on the handrail and
watched the ashes from his cigar flicker down into the unseen current
below, he said the same thing: "I am not in love with her, and I
sha'n't allow myself to be. I won't let it go any farther. But David is
no man for a girl like Elizabeth to marry." Then he would fall to
thinking just what kind of man Elizabeth ought to marry. Such
reflections proved, so he assured himself, how entirely he knew that
she belonged to David. Sometimes he wondered sullenly whether he had
not better leave Mercer before she came back? Perhaps it was his god
who made this suggestion; if so, he did not recognize a divine voice.
He always decided against such a course. It would be cowardly, he told
himself, to keep away from Elizabeth. "I will see her when she gets
home, just as usual. To stay away might make her think that I
was--afraid. And I am not in the least, because I am not in love with
her, and I shall not allow myself to be." He was perfectly sure of
himself, and perfectly sincere, too; what lover has ever understood
that love has nothing to do with volition!
Now, alone with her in the old depot carriage, his sureness permitted
him to say, significantly,
``I have been terribly lonely--without Nannie.''
``I thought you were absorbed in business cares,'' she told him drolly.
``How do you like business, Blair, really?''
``Loathe it,'' he said succinctly. ``Elizabeth, come and take dinner
with us to-morrow evening?''
``Oh, Nannie's had enough of me. She's been with me for nearly two
months.''
``I haven't been with you for two months. Be a good girl, and do some
missionary work. Slumming is the fashion, you know. Come and cheer me
up. It's been fiendishly stupid without you.''
She laughed at his sincerely gloomy voice.
``Come,'' he urged; ``we'll have dinner in the back parlor. Do you
remember that awful dinner-party?'' He laughed as he spoke, but--being
'sure';--in the darkness of the shabby hack he looked at her intently.
. . . Oh, if David were only out of the way!
``Remember it? I should think I did!'' There was no telltale flicker on
her smooth cheek; even in the gloom of the carriage he could see that
the dark amber of her eyes brimmed over with amusement, and the dimple
deepened entrancingly. ``How could I forget it? Didn't I wear my first
long dress to that dinner-party--oh, and my six-button gloves?''
``I--'' said Blair, and paused. ``I remember other things than the
gloves and long dress, Elizabeth.'' (Why shouldn't he say as much as
that? He was certain of himself, and David was certain of her, so why
not speak of what it gave him a rapturous pang to remember?)
But at his words the color whipped into her cheek; her clear brows drew
together into a slight frown. ``How is your mother, Blair?'' she said
coldly. "Oh, very well. Can you imagine Mother anything but well? The
heat has nearly killed me, but Mother is iron."
"She's perfectly wonderful!"
"Yes; wonderful woman," he agreed carelessly. "Elizabeth, promise
you'll come to-morrow evening?"
"Cherry-pie would think it was horrid in me not to stay with her, when
I've been away so long."
"I think it's horrid in you not to stay with me."
She laughed; then sighed. "David is working awfully hard, Blair."
"Darn David!" he retorted, laughing. "So am I, if that's any reason for
your giving a man your society."
"You! You couldn't work hard to save your life."
"I could, if I had somebody to work for, as David has."
"You'd better get somebody," she said gaily.
"I don't want any second-bests," he declared.
"Donkey!" Elizabeth said good-naturedly. But she was a little
surprised, for whatever else Blair was, he was not stupid--and such
talk is always stupid. That it had its root in anything deeper than
chaffing never occurred to her. They were at her own door by this time,
and Blair, helping her out of the carriage, looked into her face, and
his veins ran hot.
The next morning, when he went to see Nannie, he was absorbed and
irritable. "Girls are queer," he told her; "they marry all kinds of
men. But I'll tell you one thing: David is the last man for a girl like
Elizabeth. He is perfectly incapable of understanding her."
That was the first day that he did not assure himself that he "was not
in love."