When Robert Ferguson came in to luncheon the next day, he asked for
Elizabeth. "She hasn't come home yet from Nannie's," Miss White told
him; "I thought she would be here immejetly after breakfast. I can't
imagine what keeps her, though I suppose they have a great deal to talk
over!"
"Well, she'll have to wait for her good news," Mr. Ferguson said; and
handed a telegram to Miss White. "Despatch from David. He's bringing a
patient across the mountains to-night; says he'll turn up here for
breakfast. He'll have to go back on the ten-o'clock train, though."
Cherry-pie nibbled with excitement; "I guess he just had to come and
talk the arrangements over with her!"
"What arrangements?" Mr. Ferguson asked, vaguely; when reminded by Miss
White, he looked a little startled. "Oh, to be sure; I had forgotten."
Then he smiled:
"Well, I suppose I shall have to say 'yes.' I think I'll go East myself
next week!" he added, fatuously; but the connection was not obvious to
Miss White.
"Elizabeth got a letter from him yesterday," she said, beaming;
"they've decided on her birthday--if you are willing."
"Willing? I guess it's a case of 'he had to be resigned!'" said Robert
Ferguson--thinking of that trip East, he was positively gay. But
Cherry-pie's romance lapsed into household concerns: "We must have
something the boy likes for breakfast."
"Looking at Elizabeth will be all the breakfast he wants," Elizabeth's
uncle said, with his meager chuckle. "David's as big a donkey as any of
'em, though he hasn't the gift of gab on the subject."
When he had gone to his office, Miss White propped the telegram up on
the table, so that Elizabeth's eyes might brighten the moment she
opened the front door But to her dismay, Elizabeth did not open the
door all that afternoon. Instead came a note, plainly in her hand,
addressed to Mr. Ferguson. "Why! she is sending word that she's going
to stay all night _again_ with Nannie," Miss White thought, really
disturbed. If such a thing had been possible, Cherry-pie would have
been vexed with her beloved "lamb," for after all, Elizabeth really
ought to be at home attending to things! Miss White herself had spent
every minute since the wonderful news had been flung at her, in
attending to things. She had made a list of the people who must be
invited to the wedding, she had inspected the china-closet, she had
calculated how many teaspoons would be needed,--"Better borrow some
forks from Nannie, too," she said, beginning, like every good
housekeeper, to look careworn. "There's so much to be done!" said
Cherry-pie, excitedly. Yet this scatter-brain girl evidently meant to
stay away from home still another night. "Well, she can't, that's all
there is to it!" Miss White said, decidedly; "she must come home, so as
to be here in the morning when David arrives. Perhaps I'd better go
down to Mrs. Maitland's and take her the despatch."
She was getting ready to go, when the first rumble of the hurricane
made itself heard. Nannie dropped in, and--
"'Where's Elizabeth?' I'm sure I don't know. Isn't she at home? 'Stayed
with me last night?' Why, no, she didn't. I haven't seen Elizabeth for
two days, and--"
Nannie sprang to catch poor old Miss White, who reeled, and then tried,
as she sank into a chair, to speak: "What? _What_? Not with you last
night? Nannie! She must have been. She told me she was going--" Miss
White grew so ghastly that Nannie, in a panic, called a servant.
"Send for her uncle!" the poor lady stammered. "Send--send. Oh, what
has happened to my child?" Then she remembered the letter addressed to
Mr. Ferguson, lying on the table beside David's telegram. "Perhaps that
will say where she is. Oh, tell him to _hurry!_"
When Robert Ferguson reached home he found the two pallid, shaking
women waiting for him in the hall. Miss White, clutching that unopened
letter, tried to tell him: Elizabeth had not been at Nannie's; she had
not come home; she had--
"Give me the letter," he said. They watched him tear it open and run
his eye over it; the next instant he had gone into his library and
slammed the door in their faces.
Outside in the hall the trembling women looked at each other in
silence. Then Nannie said with a gasp, "She must have gone to--to some
friend's."
"She has no friend she would stay all night with but you."
"Well, you see she has written to Mr. Ferguson, so there can't be
anything much the matter; he'll tell us where she is, in a minute! If
he can't, I'll make Blair go and look for her. Dear, _dear_ Miss White,
don't cry!"
"There has been an accident. Oh, how shall we tell David? He's coming
to-morrow to talk over the wedding, and--"
The library door opened: "Miss White."
"Mr. Ferguson! Where--? What--?"
"Miss White, that--creature, is never to cross my threshold again. Do
you understand me? Never again. Nannie, your brother is a scoundrel.
Read that." He flung the letter on the floor between them, and went
back to his library. They heard the key turn in the lock. Miss White
stared at the shut door blankly; Nannie picked up the letter. It was
headed "The Mayor's Office," and was dated the day before; no address
was given.
"Dear Uncle Robert: I married Blair Maitland this afternoon. David did
not want me. E.F."
They read it, looked at each other with astounded eyes, then read it
again. Nannie was the first to find words:
"I--don't understand." Miss White was dumb; her poor upper lip quivered
wildly.
"She and David are to be married," Nannie stammered. "How can she
marry--anybody else? I don't understand."
Then Miss White broke out, "_I_ understand. Oh, wicked boy! My child,
my lamb! He has killed my child Elizabeth!"
"Who has? What do you mean? What _are_ you talking about!"
"He has lured her away from David," the old woman wailed shrilly.
"Nannie, Nannie, your brother is an evil, cruel man--a false man, a
false friend. Oh, my lamb! my girl!"
Nannie, staring at her with horrified eyes, was silent. Miss White sank
down on the floor, her head on the lowest step of the staircase; she
was moaning to herself: "They quarrelled about something, and this is
what she has done! Oh, she was mad, my lamb, my poor lamb! She was
crazy; David made her angry; I don't know how. And she did this
frightful thing. Oh, I always knew she would do some terrible thing
when she was angry!"
Nannie looked at the closed door of the library, then at Miss White,
lying there, crying and moaning to herself with her poor old head on
the stairs; once she tried to speak, but Miss White did not hear her;
it was intolerable to see such pain. Blair's sister, ashamed with his
shame, stammered something, she did not know what, then opening the
front door, slipped out into the dusk. The situation was so incredible
she could not take it in. Blair and Elizabeth--_married?_ She kept
saying it over and over. But it was impossible! Elizabeth was to marry
David on her birthday. "I feel as if I were going out of my mind!"
Nannie told herself, hurrying down into Mercer's black, noisy heart.
When she reached the squalor of Maitland's shantytown and saw the great
old house on the farther side of the street, looming up on its graded
embankment, black against a smoldering red sunset, she was almost
sobbing aloud, and when Harris answered her ring, she was in such
tension that she burst out at him: "Harris! where is Mr. Blair? Do you
know? Have you heard--anything?" She seized the old man's arm and held
on to it. "Where is Mr. Blair, Harris?"
"My laws, Miss Nannie! how do I know? Ain't he at the hotel? There's a
letter come for you; it come just after you went out. Looks like it was
from him. There, now, child! Don't you take on like that! I guess if
Mr. Blair can write letters, there ain't much wrong with him."
When he brought her the letter, she made him wait there in the dimly
lighted hall until she opened it, she had a feeling that she could not
read it by herself, "Oh, Harris!" she said, and began to tremble; "it's
true! He did.... They are--oh, Harris!" And while the old man drew her
into the parlor, and scuffled about to light the gas and bring her a
glass of water, she told him, brokenly--she had to tell somebody--what
had happened. Harris's ejaculations were of sheer amazement, untouched
by disapproval: "Mr. Blair? Married to Miss Elizabeth? My land! There!
He always did git in ahead!" His astounded chuckle was as confusing as
all the rest of it. Nannie, standing under the single flaring jet of
gas, read the letter again. It was, at any rate, more enlightening than
Elizabeth's to her uncle:
"Dear Nannie: Don't have a fit when I tell you Elizabeth and I are
married. She had a row with David, and broke her engagement with him.
We were married this afternoon. I'm afraid mother won't like it,
because, I admit, it's rather sudden. But really it is the easiest way
all round, especially for--other people. It's on the principle of
having your tooth pulled _quick_!--if you have to have it pulled,
instead of by degrees. I'll amount to something, now, and that will
please mother. You tell her that I will amount to something now! I want
you to tell her about it before I write to her myself--which, of
course, I shall do to-morrow--because it will be easier for her to have
it come from you. Tell her marrying Elizabeth will make a business man
of me. You must tell her as soon as you get this, because probably it
will be in the newspapers. I feel like a cur, asking you to break it to
her, because, of course, it's sort of difficult. She won't like it,
just at first; she never likes anything I do. But it will be easier for
her to hear it first from you. Oh, you dear old Nancy!--I am nearly out
of my head, I'm so happy. . . .
"P.S. We are going off for a month or so. I'll let you know where to
address us when I know myself."
Nannie dropped down into a chair, and tried to get her wits together.
If Elizabeth had broken with David, why, then, of course, she could
marry Blair; but why should she marry him right away? "It
isn't--decent!" said Nannie. And when did she break with David? Only
day before yesterday she was expecting to marry him. "It is horrible!"
said Nannie; and her recoil of disgust for a moment included Blair. But
the habit of love made her instant with excuses: "It's worse in
Elizabeth than in him. Mamma will say so, too." Then she felt a shock
of terror: "Mamma!" She smoothed out the letter, crumpled in her
shaking hand, and read it again: "'I want you to tell her--' Oh, I
_can't!_" Nannie said; "'it will be easier for her to have it come from
you--' And what about me?" she thought, with sudden, unwonted
bitterness; "it won't be 'easy' for me."
She began to take off her things; then realized that she was shivering.
The few minutes of stirring the fire which was smoldering under a great
lump of coal between the brass jambs of the grate, gave her the
momentary relief of occupation; but when she sat down in the shifting
firelight, and held her trembling hands toward the blaze, the shame and
fright came back again. "Poor David!" she said; but even as she said it
she defended her brother; "if Elizabeth had broken with him, of course
Blair had a right to marry her. But how _could_ Elizabeth! I can never
forgive her!" Nannie thought, wincing with disgust. "To be engaged to
David one day, and marry Blair the next!--Oh, Blair ought not to have
done it," she said, involuntarily; and hid her face in her hands. But
it was so intolerable to her to blame him, that she drove her mind back
to Elizabeth's vulgarity; she could bear what had happened if she
thought of Blair as a victim and not as an offender.
"I can never feel the same to Elizabeth again," she said. Then she
remembered what her brother had bidden her do, and quailed. For a
moment she was actually sick with panic. Then she, too, knew the
impulse to get the tooth pulled "quick." She got up and went swiftly
across the hall to the dining-room. It was empty, except for Harris,
who was moving some papers from the table to set it for supper.
"Oh, Harris," she said, with a gasp of relief, "she isn't here! Harris,
I have got to tell her. You don't think she'll mind much, do you?"
But by this time Harris's chuckling appreciation of Mr. Blair's
cleverness in getting in ahead had evaporated. "My, my, my, Miss
Nannie!" he said, his weak blue eyes blinking with fright, "_I_
wouldn't tell her, not if you'd gimme the Works!"
"Harris, if you were in my place, would you try to, at supper?"
"Now, Miss, how can I tell? She'll be wild; my, my; wild!"
"I don't see why. Mr. Blair had a right to get married."
"He'd ought to have let on to her about it," Harris said.
For a few minutes Nannie was stricken dumb. Then she sought
encouragement again: "Perhaps if you had something nice for supper,
she'd be--pleased, you know, and take it better?"
"There's to be cabbage. Maybe that will soften her up. She likes it;
gor, how she likes cabbage!" said Harris, almost weeping.
"Harris, how do you think she'll take it?"
"She won't take it well," the old man said. "Miss Elizabeth was Mr.
David's girl. When I come to think it over, I don't take it well
myself, Miss Nannie. Nor you don't, neither. No, she won't take it
well."
"But Miss Elizabeth had broken with Mr. David," Nannie defended her
brother; "Mr. Blair had a right--" then she shivered. "But _I've_ got
to tell her! Oh, Harris, I think she wouldn't mind so much, if he told
her himself?"
Harris considered. "Yes, Miss, she would. Mr. Blair don't put things
right to his ma. He'd say something she wouldn't like. He'd say
something about some of his pretty truck. Them things always make her
mad. That picture he bought--the lady nursin' the baby, in your parlor;
she ain't got over that yet. Oh, no, she'll take it better from you.
You be pretty with her, Miss Nannie. She likes it when you're pretty
with her. I once seen a chippy sittin' on a cowcatcher; well, it made
me think o' you and her. You be pretty to her, and then tell her, kind
of--of easy," Harris ended weakly.
Easy! It was all very well to say "_easy_"; Harris might as well say
knock her down "easy." At that moment the back door banged.
Mrs. Maitland burst into the room in intense preoccupation; the day had
been one of absorbing interest, culminating in success, and she was
alert with satisfaction. "Harris, supper! Nannie, take my bonnet! Is
your brother to be here to-night? I've something to tell him! Where's
the evening paper?"
Nannie, breathless, took the forlorn old bonnet, and said, "I--I think
he isn't coming, Mamma." Harris came running with the newspaper; they
exchanged a frightened glance, although the mistress of the house, with
one hand on the carving-knife, was already saying, "Bless, O Lord--"
At supper Mrs. Maitland, eating--as the grocer said so long ago, "like
a day-laborer"--read her paper. Nannie watching her, ate nothing at all
and said nothing at all.
When the coarse, hurried meal was at an end, and Harris, blinking with
horrified sympathy, had shut himself into his pantry, Nannie said,
faintly, "Mamma, I have something to tell you."
"I guess it will keep, my dear, I guess it will keep! I'm too busy just
now to talk to you." She crumpled up her newspaper, flung it on the
floor, and plunged over to her desk.
Nannie looked helplessly at the back of her head, then went off to her
parlor. She sat there in the firelit darkness, too distracted and
frightened to light the gas, planning how the news must be told. At
eight o'clock there was a fluttering, uncertain ring at the front door,
and Cherry-pie came quivering in: had Nannie heard anything more? Did
she know where _they_ were? "I asked her uncle to come down here and
see if Mrs. Maitland had heard anything, but--he was dreadful, Nannie,
dreadful! He said he would see the whole family in--I can't repeat
where he said he would see them!" She broke down and cried; then,
crouching at Nannie's side, she read Blair's letter by the uncertain
light of the fire. After that, except for occasional whispered
ejaculations of terror and pain, they were silent, sitting close
together like two frightened birds; sometimes a lump of coal split
apart, or a hissing jet of gas bubbled and flamed between the bars of
the grate, and then their two shadows flickered gigantic on the wall
behind them; but except for that the room was very still. When the
older woman rose to go, Nannie clung to her:
"Oh, won't you tell her? Please--please!" Poor old Miss White could
only shake her head:
"I can't, my dear, I _can't!_ It would not be fitting. Do it now, my
dear; do it immejetly, and get it over."
When Cherry-pie had wavered back into the night, Nannie gathered up her
courage to "get it over." She went stealthily across the hall; but at
the dining-room door she stood still, her hand on the knob, not daring
to enter. Strangely enough, in the midst of the absorbing distress of
the moment, some trick of memory made her think of the little
'fraid-cat, standing outside that door, trying to find the courage to
open it and get for Blair--for whose sake she stood there now--the
money for his journey all around the world! In spite of her terror, she
smiled faintly; then she opened the door and looked in. Mrs. Maitland
was still at work, and she retreated noiselessly. At eleven she tried
again.
Except for the single gas-jet under a green shade that hung above the
big desk, the room was dark. Mrs. Maitland was in her chair, writing
rapidly; she did not hear Nannie's hesitating footstep, or know that
she was in the room, until the girl put her hand on the arm of her
chair.
"Mamma."
"Yes?"
"Mamma, I have something to--to tell you."
Mrs. Maitland signed her name, put her pen behind her ear, flung a
blotter down on the heavily written page, and rubbed her fist over it.
"Well?" she said cheerfully; and glanced up at her stepdaughter over
her steel-rimmed spectacles, with kind eyes; "what are you awake for,
at this hour?" Then she drew out a fresh sheet of paper, and began to
write: "My dear Sir:--Yours received, and con--"
"Mamma . . . Blair is married."
The pen made a quick, very slight upward movement; there was a spatter
of ink; then the powerful, beautiful hand went on evenly "--tents
noted." She rubbed the blotter over this line, put the pen in a cup of
shot, and turned around. "What did you say?"
"I said . . . Blair is married."
Silence.
"He asked me to tell you."
Silence.
"He hopes you will not be angry. He says he is going to be a--a
tremendous business man, now, because he is so happy."
Silence. Then, in a loud voice: "How long has this been going on?"
"Oh, Mamma, not any time at all, truly! I am perfectly sure it--it was
on the spur of the moment."
"Married, 'on the spur of the moment'? Good God!"
"I only mean he hasn't been planning it. He--"
"And what kind of woman has married him, 'on the spur of the moment'?"
"Oh,--Mamma . . ."
Her voice was so terrified that Mrs. Maitland suddenly looked at her.
"Don't be frightened, Nannie," she said kindly. "What is it? You have
something more to tell me, I can see that. Come, out with it! Is she
bad?"
"Oh, _Mamma!_ don't! don't! It is--she is--Elizabeth--"
Then she fled.
That night, at about two o'clock, Mrs. Maitland entered her
stepdaughter's room. Nannie was dozing, but started up in her bed, her
heart in her throat at the sight of the gaunt figure standing beside
her. Blair's mother had a candle in one hand, and the other was curved
about it to protect the bending flame from the draught of the open
door; the light flickered up on her face, and Nannie was conscious of
how deep the wrinkles were on her forehead and about her mouth.
"Nannie, tell me everything."
She put the candle on the table at the head of the bed, and sat down,
leaning forward a little, as if a weight were resting on her shoulders.
Her clasped hands, hanging loosely between her knees, seemed, in the
faint light of the small, pointed flame, curiously shrunken and
withered. "Tell me," she said heavily.
Nannie told her all she knew. It was little enough.
"How do you know that Elizabeth had broken with David Richie?" her
stepmother said. Nannie silently handed her Blair's letter. Mrs.
Maitland took up her candle, and holding it close to the flimsy sheet,
read her son's statement. Then she handed it back. "I see; some sort of
a squabble; and Blair--" She stopped, almost with a groan. "His
_friend,_" she said, and her chin shook; "your father's son!" she said
brokenly.
"Mamma!" Nannie protested--she was sitting up in bed, her hair in its
two braids falling over her white night-dress, her eyes, so girlish, so
frightened, fixed on that quivering iron face; "Mamma! remember, he was
in love with Elizabeth long ago, before David ever thought--"
"In love with Elizabeth? He was never in love with anybody but himself."
"Oh, Mamma, please forgive him! It's done now, and it can't be undone."
"What has my forgiveness got to do with it? It's done, as you say. It
can't be undone. Nothing can be undone. Nothing; nothing. All the years
that remain cannot undo the years that I have been building this up."
Nannie stared at her blankly. And suddenly the hard face softened. "Lie
down. Go to sleep." She put her big roughened hand gently on the girl's
head. "Go to sleep, my child." She took up her candle, and a moment
later Nannie heard the stairs creak under her heavy tread.
Sarah Maitland did not sleep that night; but after the first outburst,
when Nannie had panted out, "It is--Elizabeth," and then fled, there
had been no anger. When the door closed behind her stepdaughter,
Blair's mother put her hand over her eyes and sat perfectly still at
her desk. _Blair was married._ And he had not told her,--that was the
first thought. Then, into the pitiful, personal dismay of mortification
and wounded love, came the sword-thrust of a second thought: he had
stolen his friend's wife.
It was not a moment for nice discriminations; the fact that Elizabeth
had not been married to David seemed immaterial. This was because, to
Sarah Maitland's generation, the word, in this matter of getting
married, was so nearly as good as the bond, that a broken engagement
was always a solemn, and generally a disgraceful thing. So, when she
said that Blair had "stolen David's wife," she cringed with shame. What
would his father say to such conduct! In what had she been wanting that
Herbert's son could disgrace his father's name--and hate his mother?
For of course he must hate her to shut her out of his life, and not
tell her he was going to get married! Her mind seemed to oscillate
between the abstraction of his dishonor and a more intimate and
primitive pain,--the sense of personal slight. "Oh, my son, my son, my
son," she said. She was bending over, her elbows on her knees, her
furrowed forehead resting on her clenched hands; her whole big body
quivered. He had shut her out.... He hated her.... He had never loved
her.... "My son! my son!" Then a sharp return of memory to the shame of
his conduct whipped her to her feet and set her walking about the room.
It was long after midnight before she said to herself that the first
thing to do was to learn exactly what had happened. Nannie must tell
her. It was then that she went up to her stepdaughter's room.
When Nannie had told her, or rather when Blair's letter had made the
thing shamefully clear, she went down-stairs and faced the situation.
Who was responsible for it? Who was to blame--before she could add, in
her mind, "Elizabeth or Blair?" some trick of memory finished her
question: who was to blame--"_this man or his parents?_" The suggestion
of personal responsibility was like a blow in the face. She flinched
under it, and sat down abruptly, breathing hard. How could it be
possible that she was to blame? What had she left undone that other
mothers did? She had loved him; no mother could have loved him more
than she did!--and he had never cared for her love. In what had she
been lacking? He had had a religious bringing up; she had begun to take
him to church when he was four years old. He had had every educational
opportunity. All that he wanted he had had. She had never stinted him
in anything. Could any mother have done more? Could Herbert himself
have done more? No; she could not reproach herself for lack of love.
She had loved him, so that she had spared him everything--even desire!
All that he could want was his before he could ask for it.
In the midst of this angry justifying of herself, tramping up and down
the long room, she stopped suddenly and looked about her; where was her
knitting? Her thoughts were in such a distracted tangle that the
accustomed automatic movement of her fingers was imperative. She tucked
the grimy pink ball of zephyr under her arm, and tightening her fingers
on the bent and yellowing old needles, began again her fierce pacing up
and down, up and down. But the room seemed to cramp her, and by and by
she went across the hall into Nannie's parlor, where the fire had
sprung into cheerful flames; here she paused for a while, standing with
one foot on the fender, knitting rapidly, her unseeing eyes fixed on
the needles. Yes; Blair had had no cares, no responsibilities,--and as
for money! With a wave of resentment, she thought that she would find
out in the morning from her bookkeeper just how much money she had
given him since he was twenty-one. It was then that a bleak
consciousness, like the dull light of a winter dawn, slowly began to
take possession of her: _money_. She had given him money; but what else
had she given him? Not companionship; she had never had the time for
that; besides, he would not have wanted it; she knew, inarticulately,
that he and she had never spoken the same language. Not sympathy in his
endless futilities; what intelligent person could sympathize with a man
who found serious occupation in buying--well, china beetles? Or
pictures! She glanced angrily over at that piece of blackened canvas by
the door, its gold frame glimmering faintly in the firelight. He had
spent five thousand dollars on a picture that you could cover with your
two hands! Yes; she had given him money; but that was all she had given
him. Money was apparently the only thing they had in common.
Then came another surge of resentment,--that pitiful resentment of the
wounded heart; Blair had never cared how hard she worked to make money
for him! It occurred to her, perhaps for the first time in her life,
that she worked very hard; she said to herself that sometimes she was
tired. Yes, she had never thought of it before, but she was sometimes
very tired. But what did Blair care for that? What did he care how hard
she worked? Even as she said it, with that anger which is a confession
of something deeper than anger, her mind retorted that if he had never
cared how hard she worked for their money, she had never cared how
easily he spent it. She had been irritated by his way of spending it,
and she had been contemptuous; but she had never really cared. So it
appeared that they did not have even money in common. The earning had
been all hers; the spending had been all his. If she had liked to buy
gimcracks, they would have had that in common, and perhaps he would
have been fond of her? "But I never knew how to be a fool," she
thought, simply. Yes; she didn't know how to spend, she only knew how
to earn. Of course, if he had had to earn what he spent, they would
have had work as a bond of sympathy. Work! Blair had never understood
that work was the finest thing in the world. She wondered why he had
not understood it, when she herself had worked so hard--worked, in
fact, so that he might be beyond the need of working. As she said that,
her fingers were suddenly rigid on her needles; it seemed as if her
soul had felt a jolt of dismay; why didn't her son understand the joy
of work? Because she had spared him all necessity for it!--for the work
she had given him to do was not real, and they both knew it. Spared
him? Robbed him! "_Who hath sinned, this man or his parents?_" "This
man," her selfish, indolent, dishonorable son, or she herself, whose
hurry to possess the one thing she wanted, that finest thing in the
world, Work!--had pushed him into the road of pleasant, shameful
idleness, the road that always leads to dishonor? Good God! what a fool
she had been not to make him work.
Sarah Maitland, tramping back and forth, the ball of pink worsted
dragging behind her in a grimy tangle, thought these things with a
sledge-hammer directness that spared herself nothing. She wanted the
truth, no matter how it made her cringe to find it! She would hammer
out her very heart to find the truth. And the truth she found was that
she had never allowed Blair to meet the negations of life--to meet
those _No's_, which teach the eternal affirmations of character. He had
had everything; he had done nothing. The result was as inevitable as
the action of a law of nature! In the illuminating misery of this
terrible night, she saw that she had given her son, as Robert Ferguson
had said to her once, "fullness of bread and abundance of idleness."
And now she was learning what bread and idleness together must always
make of a man.
Walking up and down the dimly lighted room, she had a vision of her sin
that made her groan. _She_ had made Blair what he was: because it had
been easy for her to make things easy for him, she had given him his
heart's desire, and brought leanness withal to his soul. In satisfying
her own hunger for work, she had forgotten to give it to him, and he
had starved for it! She had left, by this time, far behind her the
personal affront to her of his reserves; she took meekly the knowledge
that he did not love her: she even thought of his marriage as
unimportant, or as important only because it was a symptom of a
condition for which she was responsible. And having once realized and
accepted this fact, there was only one solemn question in her mind:
"What am I going to do about it?"
For she believed, as other parents have believed before her--and
probably will go on believing as long as there are parents and
sons--she believed that she could, in some way or other, by the very
strength of her agonizing love, force into her son's soul from the
outside that Kingdom of God which must be within. "Oh, what am I going
to do?" she said to herself.
She stood still and covered her face with her hands. "God," she said,
"don't punish him! It's my fault; punish me."
Perhaps she had never really prayed before.