The coming back to Mercer some six weeks later was to Blair a miserable
and skulking experience. To Elizabeth it was almost a matter of
indifference; there is a shame which goes too deep for embarrassment.
The night they arrived at the River House, Nannie and Miss White were
waiting for them, tearful and disapproving, of course, but distinctly
excited and romantic. After all, Elizabeth was a "bride!" and
Cherry-pie and Nannie couldn't help being fluttered. Blair listened
with open amusement to their half-scared gossip of what people thought,
and what the newspapers had said, and how "very displeased" his mother
had been; but Elizabeth hardly heard them. At the end of the call,
while Blair was bidding Nannie tell his mother he was coming to see her
in the morning. Miss White, kissing her "lamb" good night, tried to
whisper something in her ear: "_He_ said to tell you--" "No--no--no,--I
can't hear it; I can't bear it yet!" Elizabeth broke in; she put her
hands over her eyes, shivering so that Cherry-pie forgot David and his
message, and even her child's bad behavior.
"Elizabeth! you've taken cold?"
Elizabeth drew away, smiling faintly. "No; not at all. I'm tired.
Please don't stay." And with the message still unspoken, Miss White and
Nannie went off together, as fluttering and frightened as when they
came.
The newspaper excitement which had followed the announcement of the
elopement of Sarah Maitland's son, had subsided, so there was only a
brief notice the morning after their arrival in town, to the effect
that "the bride and groom had returned to their native city for a short
stay before sailing for Europe." Still, even though the papers were
inclined to let them alone, it would be pleasanter, Blair told his
wife, to go abroad.
"Well," she said, dully. Elizabeth was always dull now. She had lifted
herself up to the altar, but there was no exaltation of sacrifice;
possibly because she considered her sacrifice a punishment for her sin,
but also because she was still physically and morally stunned.
"Of course there is nobody in Mercer for whose opinion I care a
copper," Blair said. They were sitting in their parlor at the hotel;
Elizabeth staring out of the window at the river, Blair leaning forward
in his chair, touching once in a while, with timid fingers, a fold of
her skirt that brushed his knee. "Of course I don't care for a lot of
gossiping old hens; but it will be pleasanter for you not to be meeting
people, perhaps?" he said gently.
There was only one person whom he himself shrank from meeting--his
mother. And this shrinking was not because of the peculiar shame which
the thought of Mrs. Richie had awakened in him that morning in the
woods, when the vision of her delicate scorn had been so unbearable;
his feeling about his mother was sheer disgust at the prospect of an
interview which was sure to be esthetically distressing. While he was
still absent on what the papers called his "wedding tour," Nannie had
written to him warning him what he might expect from Mrs. Maitland:
"Mamma is terribly displeased, I am afraid, though she hasn't said a
word since the night I told her. Then she said very severe things--and
oh, Blair, dear, why _did_ you do it the way you did? I think Elizabeth
was perfectly--" The unfinished sentence was scratched out. "You _must_
be nice to Mamma when you come home," she ended.
"She'll kick," Blair said, sighing; "she'll row like a puddler!" In his
own mind, he added that, after all, no amount of kicking would alter
the fact. And again the little exultant smile came about his lips. "As
for being 'nice,' Nannie might as well talk about being '_nice_' to a
circular saw," he said, gaily. His efforts to be gay, to amuse or
interest Elizabeth, were almost pathetic in their intensity. "Well! the
sooner I'll go, the sooner I'll get it over!" he said, and reached for
his hat; Elizabeth was silent. "You might wish me luck!" he said. She
did not answer, and he sighed and left her.
As he loitered down to Shantytown, lying in the muddy drizzle of a
midwinter thaw, he planned how soon he could get away from the
detestable place. "Everything is so perfectly hideous," he said to
himself, "no wonder she is low-spirited. When I get her over in Europe
she'll forget Mercer, and--everything disagreeable." His mind shied
away from even the name of the man he had robbed.
At his mother's house, he had a hurried word with Nannie in the parlor:
"Is she upset still? She mustn't blame Elizabeth! It was all my doing.
I sort of swept Elizabeth off her feet, you know. Well--it's another
case of getting your tooth pulled quickly. Here goes!" When he opened
the dining-room door, his mother called to him from her bedroom: "Come
in here," she said; and there was something in her voice that made him
brace himself. "I'm in for it," he said, under his breath.
For years Sarah Maitland's son had not seen her room; the sight of it
now was a curious shock that seemed to push him back into his youth,
and into that old embarrassment which he had always felt in her
presence. The room was as it had been then, very bare and almost
squalid; there was no carpet on the floor, and no hint of feminine
comfort in a lounge or even a soft chair. That morning the inside
shutters on the lower half of the uncurtained windows were still
closed, and the upper light, striking cold and bleak across the dingy
ceiling, glimmered on the glass doors of the bookcases behind which, in
his childhood, had lurked such mysterious terrors. The narrow iron bed
had not yet been made up, and the bedclothes were in confusion on the
back of a chair; the painted pine bureau was thick with dust; on it was
the still unopened cologne bottle, its kid cover cracked and yellow
under its faded ribbons, and three small photographs: Blair, a baby in
a white dress; a little boy with long trousers and a visored cap; a big
boy of twelve with a wooden gun. They were brown with time, and the
figures were almost undistinguishable, but Blair recognized them,--and
again his armor of courage was penetrated.
"Well, Mother," he said, with great directness and with at least an
effort at heartiness, "I am afraid you are rather disgusted with me."
"Are you?" she said; she was sitting sidewise on a wooden chair--what
is called a "kitchen chair"; she had rested her arm along its back, and
as Blair entered, her large, beautiful hand, drooping limply from its
wrist, closed slowly into an iron fist.
"No, I won't sit down, thank you," he said, and stood, lounging a
little, with an elbow on the mantelpiece. "Yes; I was afraid you would
be displeased," he went on, good-humoredly; "but I hope you won't mind
so much when I tell you about it. I couldn't really go into it in my
letter. By the way, I hope my absence hasn't inconvenienced you in the
office?"
"Well, not seriously," she said dryly. And he felt the color rise in
his face. That he was frightfully ill at ease was obvious in the
elaborate carelessness with which he began to inquire about the Works.
But her only answer to his meaningless questions was silence. Blair was
conscious that he was breathing quickly, and that made him angry. "Why
_am_ I such an ass?" he asked himself; then said, with studied
lightness, that he was afraid he would have to absent himself from
business for still a little longer, as he was going abroad.
Fortunately--here the old sarcastic politeness broke into his really
serious purpose to be respectful; fortunately he was so unimportant
that his absence didn't really matter. "You _are_ the Works, you know,
Mother."
"You are certainly unimportant," she agreed. He noticed she had not
taken up her knitting, though a ball of pink worsted and a
half-finished baby sock lay on the bureau near her; this unwonted quiet
of her hands, together with the extraordinary solemnity of her face,
gave him a sense of uneasy astonishment. He would almost have welcomed
one of those brutal outbursts which set his teeth on edge by their very
ugliness. He did not know how to treat this new dignity.
"I would like to tell you just what happened," he began, with a
seriousness that matched her own. "Elizabeth had made up her mind not
to marry David Richie. They had had some falling out, I believe. I
never asked what; of course that wasn't my business. Well, I had been
in love with her for months; but I didn't suppose I had a ghost of a
chance; of course I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to--to take her
from him. But when she broke with him, why, I felt that I had a--a
right, you know."
His mother was silent, but she struck the back of her chair softly with
her closed fist: her eyebrow began to lift ominously.
"Well; we thought--I mean I thought; that the easiest way all round was
to get married at once. Not discuss it, you know, with people; but
just--well, in point of fact, I persuaded her to run off with me!" He
tried to laugh, but his mother's face was rigid. She was looking at him
closely, but she said nothing. By this time her continued silence had
made him so nervous that he went through his explanation again from
beginning to end. Still she did not speak. "You see, Mother," he said,
reddening with the discomfort of the moment, "you see it was best to do
it quickly? Elizabeth's engagement being broken, there was no reason to
wait. But I do regret that I could not have told you first. I fear you
felt--annoyed."
"Annoyed?" For a moment she smiled. "Well, I should hardly call it
'annoyed.'" Suddenly she made a gesture with her hand, as if to say,
stop all this nonsense! "Blair," she said, "I'm not going to go into
this business of your marriage at all. It's done." Blair drew a breath
of astonished relief. "You've not only done a wicked thing, which is
bad; you've done a fool thing, which is worse. I have some sort of
patience with a knave, but a fool--'annoys' me, as you express it.
You've married a girl who loves another man. You may or may not repent
your wickedness--you and I have different ideas on such subjects; but
you'll certainly repent your foolishness. When you are eaten up with
jealousy of David, you'll wish you had behaved decently. I know what
I'm talking about"--she paused, looking down at her fingers picking
nervously at the back of the chair; "I've been jealous," she said in a
low voice. Then, with a quick breath: "However, wicked or foolish, or
both, it's _done_, and I'm not going to waste my time talking about it."
"You're very kind," he said; he was so bewildered by this unexpected
mildness that he could not think what to say next. "I very much
appreciate your overlooking my not telling you about it before I did
it. The--the fact was," he began to stammer; her face was not
reassuring; "the fact was, it was all so hurried, I--"
But she was not listening. "You say you mean to go to Europe; how?"
"How?" he repeated. "I don't know just what you mean. Of course I shall
be sorry to leave the Works, but under the circumstances--"
"It costs money to go to Europe. Have you got any?"
"My salary--"
"How can you have a salary when you don't do any work?"
Blair was silent; then he said, frowning, something about his mother's
always having been so kind--
"Kind?" she broke in, "you call it kind? Well, Blair, I am going to be
kind now--another way. So far as I'm concerned, you'll not have one
dollar that you don't earn."
He looked perfectly uncomprehending.
"I've done being 'kind,' in the way that's ruined you, and made you a
useless fool. I'm going to try another sort of kindness. You can work,
my son, or you can starve." Her face quivered as she spoke.
"What do you mean?" Blair said, quietly; his embarrassment fell from
him like a slipping cloak; he was suddenly and ruthlessly a man.
She told him what she meant. "This business of your marrying Elizabeth
isn't the important thing; that's just a symptom of your disease. It's
the fact of your being the sort of man you are, that's important."
Blair was silent. Then Sarah Maitland began her statement of the
situation as she saw it; she told him just what sort of a man he was:
indolent, useless, helpless, selfish. "Until now I've always said that
at any rate you were harmless. I can't say even that now!" She tried to
explain that when a man lives on money he has not earned, he incurs, by
merely living, a debt of honor;--that God will collect. But she did not
know how to say it. Instead, she told him he was a parasite;--which
loathsome truth was like oil on the flames of his slowly gathering
rage. He was a man, she said, whose business in life was to enjoy
himself. She tried to make clear to him that after youth,--perhaps even
after childhood,--enjoyment, as the purpose of effort, was dwarfing.
"You are sort of a dwarf, Blair," she said, with curiously impersonal
brutality. Any enjoyment, she insisted, that was worthy of a man, was
only a by-product, as you might call it, of effort for some other
purpose than enjoyment. "One of our puddlers enjoys doing a good job, I
guess;--but that isn't why he does it," she said, shrewdly. Any man
whose sole effort was to get pleasure is, considering what kind of a
world we live in, a poor creature. "That's the best that can be said
for him," she said; "as for the worst, we won't go into that. You know
it even better than I do." Then she told him that his best, which had
been harmlessness, and his worst, which they "would not go into"--were
both more her fault than his. It was her fault that he was such a poor
creature; "a pithless creature; I've made you so!" she said. She
stopped, her face moving with emotion. "I've robbed you of incentive; I
see that now. Any man who has the need of work taken away from him, is
robbed. I guess enjoyment is all that is left for him. I ask your
pardon." Her humility was pitiful, but her words were outrageous. "You
are young yet," she said; "I _think_ what I am going to do will cure
you. If it doesn't, God knows what will become of you!" It was the cure
of the surgeon's knife, ruthless, radical; it was, in fact, kill or
cure; she knew that. "Of course it's a gamble," she admitted, and
paused, nibbling at her finger; "a gamble. But I've got to take it."
She spoke of it as she might of some speculative business decision. She
looked at him as if imploring comprehension, but she had to speak as
she thought, with sledgehammer directness. "It takes brains to make
money--I know because I've made it; but any fool can inherit it, just
as any fool can accept it. I'm going to give you a chance to develop
some brains. You can work or you can starve. Or," she added simply,
"you can beg. You have begged practically all your life, thanks to me."
If only she could have said it all differently! But alas! yearning over
him with agonized consciousness of her own wrong-doing, and with
singular justice in regard to his, she approached his selfish heart as
if it were one of her own "blooms," and she a great engine which could
mold and squeeze it into something of value to the world. She flung her
iron facts at him, regardless of the bruises they must leave upon that
most precious thing, his self-respect. Well; she was going to stop her
work of destruction, she said. Then she told him how she proposed to do
it: he had had everything--and he was nothing. Now he should have
nothing, so that he might become something.
There was a day, many years ago, when this mother and son, standing
together, had looked at the fierce beauty of molten iron; then she had
told him of high things hidden in the seething and shimmering metal--of
dreams to be realized, of splendid toils, of vast ambitions. And as she
spoke, a spark of vivid understanding had leaped from his mind to hers.
Now, her iron will, melted by the fires of love, was seething and
glowing, dazzlingly bright in the white heat of complete
self-renunciation; it was ready to be poured into a torturing mold to
make a tool with which he might save his soul! But no spark of
understanding came into his angry eyes. She did not pause for that; his
agreement was a secondary matter. The habit of success made her believe
that she could achieve the impossible--namely, save a man's soul in
spite of himself; "make," as she had told Robert Ferguson, "a man of
her son." She would have been glad to have his agreement, but she would
not wait for it.
Blair listened in absolute silence. "Do I understand," he said when she
had finished, "that you mean to disinherit me?"
"I mean to give you the finest inheritance a young man can have: _the
necessity for work!_--and work for the necessity. For, of course, your
job is open to you in the office. But it will be at an honest salary
after this; the salary any other unskilled man would get."
"Please make yourself clear," he said laconically; "you propose to
leave me no money when you die?"
"Exactly."
"May I ask how you expect me to live?"
"The way most decent men live--_by work_. You can work; or else, as I
said, you can starve. There's a verse in the Bible--you don't know your
Bible very well; perhaps that's one reason you have turned out as you
have; but there's a verse in the Bible that says if a man won't work,
he sha'n't eat. That's the best political economy I know. But I never
thought of it before," she said simply; "I never realized that the
worst handicap a young man can have in starting out in life is a rich
father--or mother. Ferguson used to tell me so, but somehow I never
took it in."
"So," he said--he was holding his cane in both hands, and as he spoke
he struck it across his knees, breaking it with a splintering snap;
"so, you'll disinherit me because I married the girl I love?"
"No!" she said, eager to make herself clear; "no, not at all! Don't you
understand? (My God! how can I make him understand?) I disinherit you
to make a man of you, so that your father won't be ashamed of you--as I
am. Yes, I owe it to your father to make a man of you; if it can be
done."
She rose, with a deep breath, and stood for an instant silent, her big
hands on her hips, her head bent. Then, solemnly: "That is all; you may
go, my son."
Blair got on to his feet with a loud laugh--a laugh singularly like her
own. "Well," he said, "I _will_ go! And I'll never come back. This lets
me out! You've thrown me over: I'll throw you over. I think the law
will have something to say to this disinheritance idea of yours; but
until then--take a job in your Works? I'll starve first! So help me
God, I'll forget that you are my mother; it will be easy enough, for
the only womanly thing about you is your dress"--she winced, and flung
her hand across her face as if he had struck her. "If I can forget that
I am your son, starvation will be a cheap price. We've always hated
each other, and it's a relief to come out into the open and say so. No
more gush for either of us!" He actually looked like her, as he hurled
his insults at her. He picked up his coat and left the room; he was
trembling all over.
She, too, began to tremble; she looked after him as he slammed the
door, half rose, bent over and lifted the splintered pieces of his
cane; then sat down, as if suddenly weak. She put her hands over her
face; there was a broken sound from behind them.
That night she came into Nannie's parlor and told her, briefly, that
she meant to disinherit Blair. She even tried to explain why, according
to her judgment, she must do so. But Nannie, appalled and crying, was
incapable of understanding.
"Oh, Mamma, don't--don't say such things! Tell Blair you take it back.
You don't mean it; I know you don't! Disinherit Blair? Oh, it isn't
fair! Mamma, please forgive him, please--please--"
"My dear," said Sarah Maitland patiently, "it isn't a question of
forgiving Blair; I'm too busy trying to forgive myself." Nannie looked
at her in bewilderment. "Well, well, we won't go into that," said Mrs.
Maitland; "you wouldn't understand. What I came over to say,
especially, was that if things can go back into the old ways I shall be
glad. I reckon Blair won't want to see me for a while, but if Elizabeth
will come to the house as she used to, I sha'n't rake up unpleasant
subjects. She is your brother's wife, and shall be treated with respect
in my house. Tell her so. 'Night."
But Nannie, with a soft rush across the room, darted in front of her
and stood with her back against the door, panting. "Mamma! Wait. You
must listen to me!" Her stepmother paused, looking at her with mild
astonishment. She was like another creature, a little wild creature
standing at bay to protect its young. "You have no right," Nannie said
sternly, "you have no right, Mother, to treat Blair so. Listen to me:
it was not--not nice in him to run away with Elizabeth; I know that,
though I think it was more her fault than his. But it wasn't wicked! He
loved her."
"My dear, I haven't said it was wicked," Blair's mother tried to
explain; "in fact, I don't think it was; it wasn't big enough to be
wicked. No, it was only a dirty, contemptible trick." Nannie cringed
back, her hand gripping the knob behind her. "If Blair had been a
hard-working man, knocking up against other hard-working men, trying to
get food for his belly and clothes for his nakedness, he'd have been
ashamed to play such a trick--he'd have been a man. If I had loved him
more I'd have made a man of him; I'd have made work real to him, not
make-believe, as I did. And I wouldn't have been ashamed of him, as I
am now."
"I think," said Nannie, with one of those flashes of astuteness so
characteristic of the simple mind, "that a man would fall in love just
as much if he were poor as if he were rich; and--and you ought to
forgive him, Mamma."
Mrs. Maitland half smiled: "I guess there's no making you understand,
Nannie; you are like your own mother. Come! Open this door! I've got to
go to work."
But Nannie still stood with her hand gripping the knob. "I must tell
you," she said in a low voice: "I must not be untruthful to you, Mamma:
I will give Blair all I have myself. The money my father left me shall
be his; and--and everything I may ever have shall be his." Then she
seemed to melt away before her stepmother, and the door banged softly
between them.
"Poor little soul!" Sarah Maitland said to herself, smiling, as she sat
down at her desk in the dining-room. "Exactly like her mother! I must
give her a present."
The next day she sent for her general manager and told him what course
she had taken with her son. He was silent for a moment; then he said,
with an effort, "I have no reason to plead Blair's cause, but you're
not fair, you know."
"So Nannie has informed me," she said dryly. Then she leaned back in
her chair and tapped her desk with one big finger. "Go on; say what you
like. It won't move me one hair."
Robert Ferguson said a good deal. He pointed out that she had no right,
having crippled Blair, to tell him to run a race. "You've made him what
he is. Well, it's done; it can't be undone. But you are rushing to the
other extreme; you needn't leave him millions, of course; but leave him
a reasonable fortune."
She meditated. "Perhaps a very small allowance, in fact, to make my
will sound I may have to. I must find out about that. But while I'm
alive, not one cent. I never expected to be glad his father died before
he was born, and so didn't leave him anything, but I am. No, sir; my
son can earn what he wants or he can go without. I've got to do my best
to make up to him for all the harm I've done him, and this is the way
to do it. Now, the next thing is to make my will _sound_. He says he'll
contest it"--she gave her grunt of amusement. "Pity I can't see him do
it! I'd like the fun of it. It will be cast-iron. If there was any
doubt about it, I would realize on every security I own to-morrow and
give it all away in one lump, now, while I'm alive--if I had to go
hungry myself afterward! Will you ask Howe and Marston to send their
Mr. Marston up here to draw up a new will for me? I want to go to work
on it to-night. I've thought it out pretty clearly, but it's a big job,
a big job! I don't know myself exactly how much I'm worth--how much I'd
clean up to, at any rate. But I've got a list of charities on my desk
as long as your arm. Nannie will be the residuary legatee; she has some
money from her father, too, though not very much. The Works didn't
amount to much when my husband was alive; he divided his share between
Nannie and me; he--"; she paused, reddening faintly with that strange
delicacy that lay hidden under the iron exterior; "he didn't know Blair
was coming along. Well, I suppose Nannie will give Blair something. In
fact, she as good as warned me. Think of Nannie giving _me_ notice! But
as I say, she won't have any too much herself. And, Mr. Ferguson, I
want to tell you something: I'm going to give David some money now. I
mean in a year or two. A lot."
Robert Ferguson's face darkened. "David doesn't take money very easily."
Mrs. Maitland did not ask him to explain. She was absorbed in the most
tremendous venture of her life--the saving of her son, and her plan for
David was comparatively unimportant. She put through the business of
her will with extraordinary despatch and precision, and with a
ruthlessness toward Blair that took her lawyer's breath away; but she
would not hear one word of protest.
"Your business, sir, is to see that this instrument is unbreakable,"
she said, "not to tell me how to leave my money."
The day after the will was executed she went to Philadelphia. "I am
going to see David," she told her general superintendent; "I want to
get this affair off my mind so I can settle down to my work, but I've
got to square things up first with him. You'll have to run the shop
while I'm off!"
She had written to David briefly, without preface or apology:
"DEAR DAVID,--Come and see me at the Girard House Tuesday morning at
7.45 o'clock."