Of course, with that scene in the parlor, all the intimacies of youth
were broken short off; although between the two girls some sort of
relationship was patched up. Nannie, thrown suddenly into the whirlpool
of her brother's emotions, was almost beside herself with distress; she
was nearly twenty-eight years old, but this was her first contact with
the primitive realities of life. With that contact,--which made her
turn away her horrified, virginal eyes; was the misery of knowing that
Blair was suffering. She was ready to annihilate David, had such a
thing been possible, to give her brother what he wanted. As David could
not be made non-existent, she did her best to comfort Blair by trying
to make Elizabeth forgive him. The very next day she came to plead that
Blair might come himself to ask for pardon. Elizabeth would not listen:
"Please don't speak of it."
"But Elizabeth--"
"I am perfectly furious, and I am very disgusted. I never want to see
Blair again!"
At which Blair's sister lifted her head.
"Of course, he ought not to have spoken to you, but I think you forget
that he loved you long before David did."
"Nonsense!" Elizabeth cried out impatiently.
But Nannie's tears touched her. "Nannie, I can't see him, and I won't;
but I'll come and see you when he is not there." At which Nannie flared
again.
"If you are angry at my brother, and can't forgive just a momentary, a
passing feeling,--which, after all, Elizabeth, _is_ a compliment; at
least everybody says it's a compliment to have a man say he loves you--"
"Not if you're engaged to another man!" Elizabeth burst in, scarlet to
her temples.
"Blair loved you before David thought of you."
"Now, Nannie, don't be silly."
"If you can't overlook it, because of our old friendship, you will have
to drop me, too, Elizabeth."
Nannie was so pitiful and trembling that Elizabeth put her arms around
her. "I'll never drop you, dear old Nannie!"
So, as far as the two girls were concerned, the habit of affection
persisted; but Mrs. Maitland was not annoyed by having Elizabeth
present when Blair came to supper.
Blair did not come to supper very often now; he did not come to the
Works. "Is your brother sick?" Sarah Maitland asked her stepdaughter
three or four days later. "He hasn't been at his desk since Monday.
What's the matter with him?"
"He is worried about something, Mamma."
"Worried? What on earth has _he_ got to worry him?" she grunted. In her
own worry she had come across the hall to speak to Nannie, and find
out, if she could, something about Blair. As she turned to go back to
the dining-room, a little more uneasy than when she came in, her eye
fell on that picture which Blair had left, a small oasis in the desert
of Nannie's parlor, and with her hand on the door-knob she paused to
look at it. The sun was lying on the dark oblong, and in those
illuminated depths maternity was glowing like a jewel. Sarah Maitland
saw no art, but she saw divine things. She bent forward and looked deep
into the picture; suddenly her eyes smiled until her whole face
softened. "Why, look at his little foot," she said, under her breath;
"she's holding it in her hand!" She was silent for a moment; then she
spoke as if to herself: "When Blair was as big as that, I bought him a
pair of green morocco slippers. I don't suppose you remember them,
Nannie? They buttoned round the ankle; they had white china buttons. He
used to try to pick the buttons off." She smiled again vaguely; then
blinked as if awakening from a dream, and blew a long bubbling sigh
through her closed lips; "I can't imagine why he doesn't come to the
office!"
In the dining-room, as she took up her pen, she frowned. "Debt again?"
she asked herself. But when, absorbed and irritable, Blair came into
her office at the Works, and sat down at his desk to write endless
letters that he tore up as soon as they were written, she did not ask
for any explanation. She merely told Robert Ferguson to tell the
bookkeeper to make a change in the pay-roll. "I'm going to raise
Blair's salary," she said. Money was the only panacea Mrs. Maitland
knew anything about.
That next fortnight left its marks on Blair Maitland. People who have
always had what they want, have a sort of irrational certainty of
continuing to have what they want. It makes them a little unhumanly
young. Blair's face, which had been as irresponsible as a young faun's,
suddenly showed those scars of thwarted desire which mean age. There
was actual agony in his sweet, shallow eyes, and with it the
half-resentful astonishment of one who, being unaccustomed to
suffering, does not know how to bear it. He grew very silent; he was
very pale; in his pain he turned to his sister with an openness of
emotion which frightened and shamed her; he had no self-control and no
dignity.
"I must see her. I must, I must! Go and ask her to see me for a moment.
I've disgusted her"--Nannie blushed; "but I'll make her forgive me."
Sometimes he burst out in rages at David: "What does _he_ know about
love? What kind of a man is he for Elizabeth? She's a girl now, but if
he gets her, God help him when she wakes up, a woman! Not that _I_ mean
to try to get her. Understand that. Nothing is farther from my mind
than that. She belongs to him; I play fair. I don't pretend to be a
saint, but I play fair. I don't cut in, when the man's my friend. No; I
just want to see her and ask her to forgive me. That's all. Nannie, for
God's sake ask her if she won't see me, just for five minutes!"
He quivered with despair. Twice he went himself to Mr. Ferguson's
house. The first time Miss White welcomed him warmly, and scuttled
up-stairs saying she would "tell Elizabeth." She came down again, very
soberly. "Elizabeth is busy, Blair, and she says she can't see you."
The next time he called he was told at the door that "Miss Elizabeth
asks to be excused." Then he wrote to her: "All I ask is that you shall
see me, so that I can implore you to pardon me."
Elizabeth tore the letter up and threw it into the fire. But she
softened a little. "Poor Blair," she said to herself, "but of course I
shall never forgive him."
She had not told David what Blair had done. "He would be furious," she
thought. "I'll tell him later--when we are married"; at the word, the
warm, beautiful wave of young love rose in her heart; "later, when I
belong to him, I will tell him everything!" She would tell him
everything just as she would give him everything; not that she had much
to give him--only herself and her little money. That blessed money, on
which he and she could live for two years,--she was going to give him
that! For she and Nannie and Cherry-pie had decided that if the money
were _his_, by a gift, then David, who was perfectly crazy and noble
about independence, would feel that he and Elizabeth were living on his
money, not hers. It was an artless and very feminine distinction, but
serious enough to the three women who were all so young--Elizabeth, in
fact, being the oldest, and Cherry-pie, at sixty-three, the youngest.
And not only had they discovered this way of overcoming David's
scruples about a shorter engagement, but Elizabeth had had another
inspiration: why not be married on the very day that the money came
into her possession? "Oh, splendid!" said Nannie; but she spoke with an
effort, remembering Blair. A little timidly, Elizabeth had told her
uncle of this wonderful plan about the money. He snorted with amusement
at her way of whipping the devil round the stump by a "gift" to David;
but after a rather startled moment, although he would not commit
himself to a date, he was inclined to think an earlier marriage
practicable. We are selfish creatures at best, all of us: Elizabeth's
way of being happy herself opened a possibility of happiness for her
uncle. "Mrs. Richie can't make David an excuse for saying 'no,' if the
boy gets a home of his own," he thought; and added to himself, "of
course, when the child's money is used up, I'll help them out." But to
his niece he only barked warningly: "Well, let's hear what David has to
say; _he_ has some sense."
"Do you think there's much doubt as to what he'll say?" Elizabeth said;
and the dimple deepened so entrancingly that Robert Ferguson gave her a
meager kiss. After securing this somewhat tentative consent, Elizabeth
and Cherry-pie decided that the next thing to do was to "make David
write to uncle, and simply _insist_ that the wedding shall be next
month!" Her plan was very simple: when David came to Mercer to spend
her birthday, he should receive, at the same moment, her money and
herself.
That future time of sacramental giving and of complete taking was in
her thoughts with tenderness and shame and glory, as it is in the
thought of every woman who loves and forgets herself. Yes, he could
have her now; but he must take her money! That was the price he had to
pay--the taking of her money. That it would be a high price to a man
with his peculiarly intense feeling about independence, Elizabeth knew;
but he would be willing to pay it! Elizabeth could not doubt that. No
price could be too high, he loved her so! She shivered with happiness
at the thought of how he loved her; some soft impulse of passion made
her lift her round wrist,--that bitten wrist! to her mouth, and kiss
it, hard. David had kissed it, many times! Yes; she was his if he would
pay the price! She was going to tell him so, and then wait, glowing,
and shrinking, and eager, for him to come and "take her."
It was so true, so limpid, this noble flame that burned in her, that
she almost forgot Blair's behavior; the only thing she thought of was
her plan, and the difficulty of putting it into the cold limits of pen
and ink! But with much joyous underlining of important words she did
succeed in stating it to him. She told him, not only the practical
details, but with a lovely, untrammelled outpouring of her soul which
was sacrificial, she told him that she wanted to be his wife. She had
no reserves; it was an elemental moment, and the matter of what is
called modesty had no place in her ardent purity. It rarely has a place
in organic impulses. In connection with death, or birth, or love,
modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness. So Elizabeth, who
had never been self-conscious in her life, told David, with perfect
simplicity, that she "wanted to be married." She said she had "worked
the money part of it out," and according to her latest estimate of how
much, or rather how little, they could live on, it was possible. "You
will say, we haven't even as much as this," she wrote, after she had
stated what seemed to be the minimum income; then, triumphantly: "_we
have!_ the money Uncle is going to give me on my birthday! If we live
on it, instead of hoarding it up, it will last _at least_ two years!
I've talked to Uncle about it, and I'm pretty sure he will consent; but
you'd better write and urge him,--_just insist!_" Then she approached
the really difficult matter of making David agree to live on money that
was not his. She admitted that she knew how he felt on such matters.
"And you are all wrong," she declared candidly, "wrong, and a goose.
But, so long as you do feel so, why, you needn't any longer. For I am
going to give the money to you. It is to be yours, _not mine_. You
can't refuse to use the money that is _yours_, that comes to you as a
'gift'? It will be as much _yours_ as if somebody left it to you in
their will, and you can burn it up, if you want to!" And when
"business" had been written out, her heart spoke:
"Dear" (she stopped to kiss the paper), "dear, I hope you won't burn it
up, because I am tired of waiting, and I hope you are too;"--when she
wrote those last words, she was suddenly shy; "Uncle is to give me the
money on my birthday--let us be married that day. I _want_ to be
married. I am all yours, David, all my soul, and all my mind, and all
my body. I have nothing that is not yours to take; so the money is
yours. No, I will not even give it to you! it belongs to you
already--as I do. Dear, come and take it--and me. I love you--love
you--love you. _I want you to take me_. I want to be your wife. Do you
understand? I _want_ to belong to you. I _am_ yours."
So she tried, this untutored creature, to put her soul and body into
words, to write the thing that cannot even be spoken, whose utterance
is silence. The mailing of the letter was a rite in itself; in the
dusk, as she held the green lip of the post-box open, she kissed the
envelope, as she had kissed the glowing sheet an hour before. She said
to herself that she was "too happy to live!" As she said it, a wave of
pity blotted out her usual shamed resentment at that poor mother of
hers who had not been happy;--and whose lack of self-control was,
Elizabeth believed, her legacy to her child. But her gravity was only
for a moment; forgetting Blair, and the possible chance of meeting him,
she flew down to Nannie's to tell her that the die had been cast--the
letter had been written! Nannie, sitting by herself in the parlor,
brooding over her brother's troubles, was trying to draw; but Elizabeth
brushed aside pencils and crusts of bread and india-rubbers, and flung
her arms about her, pressing her face against hers and pouring the
happy secret into her ear:
"Oh, Nannie--I've told him! We'll be married on my birthday. Go ahead
and get your dress!" she said, breathlessly, and Nannie tried her best
to be happy, too.
For the next three days Elizabeth moved about in a half-dream,
sometimes reddening suddenly; sometimes breathing a little quickly,
with a faint fright in her eyes,--had she said too much? would he
understand? Then a gush of confident love filled her like music. "I
couldn't say too much! I want him to know that I feel--that way."
When David read that throbbing letter, he grew scarlet to his temples.
There had been many moments during their engagement when Elizabeth, in
slighter ways, had bared her soul to him, and always he had had the
impulse to cover his eyes, as in a holy of holies. He had never, in
those moments, dared to take advantage of such divine nakedness, even
by a kiss. But she had never before trusted her passion to the coldness
of pen and ink; it had had the accompaniment of eyes and lips, and
eager, breaking voice. Perhaps if the letter had come at a different
moment, he could more easily have called up that voice, and those humid
eyes; he might have felt again the rose-pressure of the soft mouth. As
it was, he read it in troubled preoccupation; then reddened sharply: he
was a worthless cuss; he couldn't stand on his own legs and get married
like a man; his girl had to urge her uncle to let her support her
lover! "Damn," said David softly.
A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of
mind. David's frame of mind when he read those words about urging
Robert Ferguson, was not hospitable to other people's generosity, for
Elizabeth's hot letter came on what had been, figuratively speaking, a
very cold day. In the morning he had been reprimanded by the House
officer for some slight forgetfulness--a forgetfulness caused by his
absorption in planning an experiment in the laboratory. At noon he made
the experiment, which, instead of crowning a series of deductions with
triumphant proof, utterly failed. Then he had had pressing reminders of
bills, still unpaid, for a pair of trousers and a case of instruments,
and he had admitted to himself that he would have to ask his mother for
the money to meet them. "I am a fizzle, all round," he had told himself
grimly. "Can't remember anything overnight. Can't count on a doggone
reaction. Can't pay for my own pants! I won't be able to marry for ten
years. If Elizabeth is wise, she will throw me over. She'll be tired of
waiting for me, before I can earn enough to buy my instruments--let
alone the shoe-strings Mr. Ferguson talked about!"
Then her letter came. It was a spur on rowelled flesh. Elizabeth _was_
tired of waiting! She said so. But she would help him; she had induced
her uncle to consent that she should "give" him money; that she should,
in fact, support him!--just as his mother had been doing all his life.
He was sore with disappointment at himself, yet, when he answered her
letter his eyes stung at the thought of the loveliness of her love! He
held her letter in his hand as he wrote, and once he put it to his
lips. All the same he wrote, as he had to write, laconically:
"DEAR ELIZABETH,--I'm sure Mr. Ferguson will agree with me that your
money cannot be mine, by any gift. Calling it so won't make it so.
Anyhow, it would not support us two years. By that time, as things look
now, I shall probably not be earning any kind of an income. I am sorry
you are tired of waiting, but I can't let you be imprudent. And apart
from prudence, I could not respect myself if you supported me. It has
been misery to me to have Materna saddled with a big, lazy brute of a
fellow like me, who ought by this time to be taking care of you both. I
am sure, if you think it over, you would be ashamed of me if I asked
your uncle to help me out by letting you marry me now. Anyhow, I should
be ashamed of myself. Well, the Lord only knows when I will come up to
time! You might as well make up your mind to it that I'm a fizzle. I am
discouraged with myself and everything else, and I see you are too;
Heaven knows I don't blame you. I know you think it is an awfully long
time to wait, but it isn't as long to you as it is to me. Dear, I love
you; I can't tell you how I love you. I haven't words, as you have, but
you know I do--and yet sometimes I feel as if I oughtn't to marry you."
Elizabeth, running down the steps to meet the postman, saw a familiar
imprint on the corner of an envelope, and drew it from the pack before
the good-natured man could hand it to her.
"Guess you don't want no Philadelphia letter?" he said slyly.
"Of course I don't!" she retorted; and the trudging postman smiled for
a whole block because of the light in her face. In the house, the
letter in her hand, she stopped to hug Miss White. "Cherry-pie! the
letter has come. I'm to be married on my birthday!"
"Oh, my lamb," said Cherry-pie, "however shall I get things ready in
time!" Elizabeth did not wait to help her in her housekeeping
anxieties. She fled singing up to her room.
"Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, joyful,
Oh, that will be joyful,
To meet to part no more!"
Then she opened the letter.... She read the last lines with unseeing
eyes; the first lines were branding themselves into her soul. She
folded the brief sheet with deliberation, and slowly put it back into
the envelope. Then the color began to fall out of her face. Her eyes
smoldered, glowed, then suddenly blazed: "He is sorry I am tired
waiting."
Something warm, like a lifting tide of heat, was rising just below her
breast-bone; it rose, and rose, and surged, until she gasped, and cried
out hoarsely: "If 'I think it over,' I'll be 'ashamed,' will I?
'Couldn't respect himself? What about me respecting myself?" And the
intolerable wave of heat still rose, swelling and bursting until it
choked her; she was strangling! She clutched at her throat, then flung
out clenched hands. "He 'can't let' me marry him? It's 'a long time for
_me_ to wait'! I must 'make up my mind to it'! I hate him--I want to
kill him--I want to tear him! What did I tell him? 'to come and take
me'? And he doesn't want me! And Nannie knows I told him to come, and
Miss White and Uncle know it. And they will know he didn't want me. Oh,
how could I have told him I wanted him? I must kill him. I must kill
myself--" Her wild outpouring of words was without sense or meaning to
her. She shuddered violently, something crimson seemed to spread before
her eyes, but the pallor of her face was ghastly. She began to pace up
and down the room. Once she unfolded the letter, and glancing again at
those moderate words, laughed loudly. "'His,'" she said, "I told him I
was 'his'? I must have been out of my head. Well, I'll 'think it over!'
I'll 'think it over!'--he needn't worry about that. Oh, I could kill
myself! And I told Cherry-pie I was going to be--" she could not speak
the word. She stood still and gasped for breath.
The paroxysm was so violent, and so long in coming to its height before
there could be any ebb, that suddenly she reeled slightly. A gray mist
seemed to roll up out of the corners of the room. She sank down on the
floor, crumpling up against her bed. When she opened her eyes, the mist
had gone, and she felt very stiff and a little sick. "Why, where am I?"
she said aloud, "what's the matter with me?" Then, dully, she
remembered David's letter. "I was so angry I fainted," she thought, in
listless astonishment. For the moment she was entirely without feeling,
neither angry, nor wounded, nor ashamed. Then, little by little, the
dreadful wave, which had ebbed, began to rise again. But now it was
cold, not hot. She said to herself, quietly, that she would write to
David Richie, and tell him she _had_ 'thought it over'; and that
neither she nor her money was his, or any further concern of his. "He
needn't trouble himself; there would be no more 'imprudence.' Oh, fool!
fool! immodest fool! to have told him he 'could have her for the
taking,' and he said it was 'long' for _her_ to wait!" It was an
unbearable recollection. "His," she had said; "soul and body." She saw
again the written words that she had kissed, and she had an impulse to
tear the flesh of the lovely young body she had offered this man, and
he had--declined. "_His?_" She blushed until she had to put her cold
hands on her cheeks and forehead to ease the scorch. The modesty which
a great and simple moment had obliterated came back with intolerable
sharpness.
By and by she got on her feet and dragged herself to a chair; she
looked very wan and languid. For the moment the fire was out. It had
burned up precious things.
"I'll write to him to-morrow," she thought. And through the cold rage
she felt a hot stab of satisfaction; her letter--"a rather different
letter, this time!" would make him suffer! But not enough. Not enough.
She wished she could make him die, as she was dying. But she could not
write at that moment; the idea of taking up a pen turned her sick with
the remembrance of what her pen had written three days before. Instead
of writing, she would go out and walk, and walk, and walk, and think
how she could punish him--how she could _kill_ him! Where should she
go? Never mind! anywhere; anywhere. Just let her get out, let her be
alone, where nobody could speak to her. How could she ever speak to
people again?--to Miss White, who was down in the dining-room, now,
planning for the--wedding! To Nannie, who knew that David had been
summoned, and who must be told that he refused to come; to Blair, who
would guess--she paused, remembering that she was angry with Blair.
There was a perceptible instant before she could recollect why; when
she did, she felt a pang of relief in her agony of humiliation. Blair,
whatever else he was, was a _man_, a man who could love a woman! It
occurred to her that the girl Blair loved would not be thought immodest
if she showed him how much she loved him.
She began to put on her things to go out, and as she fastened her hat
she looked at herself in the glass. "I have a wicked sort of face," she
thought, with a curious detachment from the situation which was almost
that of an outside observer. She packed a small hand-bag, and then
opened her purse to see if she had money enough to carry out a vague
plan of going somewhere to spend the night, "to get away from people."
It was noon when she went down-stairs; in the hall she called to Miss
White that she was going out.
"But it's just dinner-time, my lamb," Miss White called back from the
dining-room; "and I must talk to you about--"
"I--I want to see Nannie," Elizabeth said, in a smothered voice. It
occurred to her that, later, she would go and tell Nannie that she had
broken her engagement; it would be a satisfaction to do that, at any
rate!
"Oh, you're going to take dinner with her?" Miss White said, peering
out into the hall; "well, tell her to come in this afternoon and let us
talk things over. There is so much to be done between now and the
wedding," Cherry-pie fretted happily.
"_Wedding!"_ Elizabeth said to herself; then slipped back the latch of
the front door: "I sha'n't come back until to-morrow."
"Oh, my lamb!" Miss White remonstrated, "I _must_ ask you some
questions about the wedding!" Then she remembered more immediate
questions: "Is your satchel packed? Have you plenty of clean
pocket-handkerchiefs? Elizabeth! be careful not to take cold, and ask
Nannie how many teaspoons she can lend us--" The door slammed. It
seemed to Elizabeth that she could never look Cherry-pie in the face
again. She had a frantic feeling that if she could not escape from that
intolerable insistence on the--the wedding, she would die. In the
street, the mere cessation of Miss White's joyous twittering was a
relief. Well, she must go where she could be alone. She walked several
blocks before she thought of Willis's; it would take at least two hours
to get there, and she could think things over without interruption. She
would think how she could save her self-respect before Miss White and
her uncle and Nannie; and she would also think of some dreadful way,
some terrible way to punish David Richie! Yes; she would walk out to
Willis's. . . .
"Elizabeth!" some one said, at her elbow, and with a start she turned
to see Blair. As they looked at each other, these two unhappy beings,
each felt a faint pity for the other. Blair's face was haggard;
Elizabeth's was white to the point of ghastliness, but there was a
smudge of crimson just below the glittering amber of her eyes.
"Elizabeth!" he said, shocked, "what is it? You are ill! What has
happened?"
"Nothing. I--am tired." She was so unconscious of everything but the
maelstrom realization that she hated David that she did not remember
that the hesitating man beside her was under the ban of her
displeasure. Her only thought was that she wished he would leave her to
herself.
"Dark day, isn't it?" Blair said; but his voice broke in his throat.
"I think we are going to have rain," Elizabeth answered, mechanically.
She was perfectly unaware of what she said, for at that moment she saw,
on the other side of the street, the friendly postman who two hours ago
had brought her David Richie's insult; now, his empty pouch over his
shoulder, he was trudging back to the post-office. Against the
clamoring fury of her thoughts and the instant vision of David's
letter, Blair's presence was no more to her than the brush of a wing
across the surface of a torrent.
As for Blair, he was dazed, and then ecstatic. She had not sent him
away! She was perfectly matter-of-fact! "'_I think we are going to have
rain_.'" She must have forgiven him! "May I walk home with you,
Elizabeth?" he said breathlessly.
"I'm not going home. I am--just walking."
"So am I," he said. He had got himself in hand by this time; every
faculty was alert; he had his chance to ask for pardon! "Come out to
Mrs. Todd's, and have some pink ice-cream. Elizabeth, do you remember
the paper roses on those dreadful marble-topped tables that were sort
of semi-transparent?"
Elizabeth half smiled. "I had forgotten them; how horrid they were!"
With the surface of her mind she was conscious that his presence was a
relief; it was like a veil between her and the flames.
Blair, watching her furtively, said: "I'll treat. Come along, let's
have a spree!"
"You always did do the treating," she said absently. Blair laughed. The
primitive emotions are always naked; but how inevitably most of us try
to cover them with the fig-leaf of trivial speech--a laugh, perhaps, or
a question about the weather; somehow, in some way, the nakedness must
be covered! So now, Love and Hate, walking side by side in Mercer's
murky noon, were for the moment hidden from each other. Blair laughed,
and said he would make her "treat" for a change, and she replied that
she couldn't afford it.
At the toll-house he urged again, with gay obstinacy. "Oh, come in! You
needn't eat the stuff, but just for the fun of the thing; Mrs. Todd
will be charmed to see us, I'm sure."
"Well," Elizabeth agreed; for a moment the vapid talk was like balm
laid upon burnt flesh. Then suddenly she remembered how David had
sprung up that snowy path to the toll-house, to knock on the window and
cry, "I've got her!" Ah, he was a little too sure; a _little_ too sure!
She was not so easy to get as all that, not so cheap as he seemed to
think--though she had offered herself; had even told him she was "tired
of waiting"! (And at home Cherry-pie was counting the teaspoons for the
wedding breakfast.)
Blair heard that fierce intake of her breath, and quivered without
knowing why. "Yes, let us go!" Elizabeth said fiercely. At least this
chuckling old woman should see that David had not "got her"; she should
see her with Blair, and know that there were men in the world who cared
for her, if David Richie did not.
Mrs. Todd was not at home; perhaps, if she had been. . . .
But instead of the big, motherly old figure, beaming at them from the
toll-house door, a slatternly maid-servant said her mistress was out.
"We ain't doin' much cream now," she said, wrapping her arms in her
apron and shivering; "it's too cold. I ain't got anything but vanilla."
"We'll have vanilla, then," Blair said, in his rather courtly way, and
the girl, opening the door of the "_saloon_," scurried off. "By Jove!"
said Blair, "I believe these are the identical blue paper roses--look
at them!"
She sat down wearily. "I believe they are," she said, and began to pull
off her gloves. Outside in the tollhouse garden the frosted stems of
last summer's flowers stood upright in the snow. She remembered that
Mrs. Todd's geraniums had been glowing in the window that winter day
when David had shouted his triumphant news. Probably they were dead
now. Everything else was dead.
"Still the tissue-paper star on the ceiling!" Blair cried, gaily, "yes,
everything is just the same!" And indeed, when the maid, glancing with
admiring eyes at the handsome gentleman and the cross-looking lady, put
down on the semi-translucent marble top of the table two tall glasses
of ice-cream, each capped with its dull and dented spoon, the past was
completely reproduced. As the frowsy little waitress left them, they
looked at the pallid, milky stuff, and then at each other, and their
individual preoccupations thinned for a moment. Blair laughed;
Elizabeth smiled faintly:
"You don't expect me to eat it, I hope?"
"I won't make you eat it. Let's talk."
But Elizabeth took up her gloves. "I must go, Blair."
He pushed the tumblers aside and leaned toward her; one hand gripped
the edge of the table until the knuckles were white: the other was
clenched on his knee. "Elizabeth," he said, in a low voice, "have you
forgiven me?"
"Forgiven you? What for?" she said absently; then remembered and looked
at him indifferently. "Oh, I suppose so. I had forgotten."
"I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't loved you. You know that."
She was silent.
"Do you hate me for loving you?" On Elizabeth's cheeks the smudge of
crimson began to flame into scarlet. "I don't hate you. I think you
were a fool to love me. I think anybody is a fool to love anybody."
In a flash Blair understood. _She had quarrelled with David!_
It seemed as if all the blood in his body surged into his throat; he
felt as if he were suffocating; but he spoke quietly. "Don't say I was
a fool; say I am a fool, if you want to. Because I love you still. I
love you now. I shall never stop loving you."
Elizabeth glanced at him with a sort of impersonal interest. So _that_
was the way a man might love? "Well, I am sorry for you, Blair. I'm
sorry, because it hurts to love people who don't love you. At least, I
should think it did. I don't love anybody, so I don't know much about
it."
"You have broken with David," he said slowly.
"How did you know?" she said, with a surprised look; then added
listlessly, "Yes; I've done with David. I hate him." She looked blankly
down at her muff, and began to stroke the fur. It occurred to her that
before going to Willis's she must see Nannie, or else she would have
told Miss White a lie; again the double working of her mind interested
her; rage, and a desire to be truthful, were like layers of thought.
She noted this, even while she was saying again, between set teeth, "I
hate him."
"He has treated you badly," Blair said.
"How did you know?" she said, startled.
"I know David. What does a man like David know about loving a woman? He
would talk his theories and standards to her, when he could be
silent--in her arms!" He flung out his hand and caught her roughly by
the wrist. "Elizabeth, for God's sake, _marry me._"
[Illustration: "ELIZABETH, MARRY ME!"]
He had risen and was leaning toward her, his fingers gripped her wrist
like a trap, his breath was hot against her neck, his eyes glowed into
hers. "Marry--me, Elizabeth."
The moment was primal; the intensity of it was like a rapier-thrust,
down through her fury to the quick of womanly consciousness; she shrank
back. "Don't," she said, faintly; "don't--" For one instant she forgot
that she hated David. Instantly he was tender.
"Dearest, dearest, I love you. Be my wife. Elizabeth, I have always
loved you, always; don't you remember?" He was kneeling beside her,
lifting the hem of her skirt and kissing it, murmuring crazy words; but
he did not touch her, which showed that the excuse of passion was not
yet complete. And indeed it was not, for somewhere in the tumult of his
mind he was defending himself--perhaps to his god: "_I have the right._
It's all over between them. Any man has the right now." Then, aloud:
"Elizabeth, I love you. I shall love you forever. Marry me. Now.
To-night." When he said that, it was as if he had struck his god upon
the mouth--for the accusing Voice ceased. And when it ceased, he no
longer defended himself. Elizabeth looked at him, dazed. "No, I know
you don't care for me, now," he said. "Never mind that! I will teach
you to care; I will teach you--" he whispered: "the meaning of love!
_He_ couldn't teach you; he doesn't know it himself; he doesn't"--he
was at a loss for a word; some instinct gave him the right one--"want
you."
It was the crack of the whip! She answered it with a look of hate. But
still she was silent.
"You love him," he flung at her.
"I do not. I hate him! hate him! hate him! I wish he were dead in this
room, so I could trample on him!" Even in the scorch of that insane
moment, Blair Maitland flinched at such a declaration of hate. Hate
like that is the left hand of Love. He had sense enough left in his
madness to know that, and he could have killed David because he was
jealous of such precious hate.
"You'll get over that," he assured her; neither of them saw in such an
assurance the confession that he knew she loved David still. And still
his smitten god was silent! "You--you hate him because he slighted
you," Blair said, stammering with passion. "But for God's sake,
Elizabeth, _show_ him that you hate him. Since he despises you, despise
him! Will you let him slap you in the face, and still love him?"
"I do not love him."
They were both standing; Elizabeth, staring at him with unseeing eyes,
seemed to be answering some fierce interrogation in her own thought:
What? was _this_ the way to kill David Richie? That it would kill her,
too, never occurred to her. If it had occurred to her, it would have
seemed worth while--well worth while!
"Then why do you let him think you love him?" Blair was insisting, in a
violent whisper, "why do you let him think you are under his heel
still? Show him you hate him--if you do hate him? Marry me, _that will
show him._"
They were standing, now, facing each other--Love and Hate. Love,
radiant, with glorious eyes, with beautiful parted lips, with
outstretched hands that prayed, and threatened, and entreated: "Come! I
must have you,--God, I _must!_" And Hate, black-browed, shaking from
head to foot, with dreadful set stare, and hands clenched and
trembling; hands that reached for a dagger to thrust, and thrust again!
Hands reaching out and finding the dagger in that one, hot, whispered
word: "Come." Yes; that would "show him"!
"When?" she said, trembling.
And he said, "Now."
Elizabeth flung up her head with a look of burning satisfaction.
"_Come!_" she said; and laughing wildly, she struck her hand into his.