Nearly two months had passed since that dreadful day when David Richie
had gone to his mother to be comforted. In his journey back across the
mountains his mind and body were tense with anticipation of the letter
which he was confident was awaiting him in Philadelphia. He was too
restless to lie down in his berth. Once he went into the day coach and
wandered up and down the aisle between the rows of huddled and
uncomfortable humanity. Sometimes a sleepy passenger, hunched up on a
plush seat, would swear at him for jostling a protruding foot, and once
a drearily crying baby, propped against a fat and sleeping mother,
clutched with dirty fingers at his coat. At that little feeble pull he
stopped and looked down at the small, wabbling head, then bent over and
lifted the child, straightening its rumpled clothes and cuddling it
against his shoulder. The baby gurgled softly in his ear--and instantly
he remembered the baby he had seen on the raft the night that he first
knew he was in love with Elizabeth. When he went back to the
smoking-compartment and sat down, his hands deep in his pockets, his
head sunk between his shoulders, his hat pulled down over his eyes, he
thought of that raft baby and wondered if it were alive. But such
thoughts were only in the moments when his bruised mind could not
steady itself on what had happened to him. Most of the time he was
saying, over and over, just what he was going to do the next morning:
he would get into the station; take a cab; drive to the hospital--a
dozen times that night his thumb and finger sought his waistcoat pocket
for a bill to hasten the driver of that cab! leap out, run up the
stairs to the mail-rack beside the receiving clerk's desk, seize
Elizabeth's letter--here the pause would come, the moment when his body
relaxed, and something seemed to melt within him: suppose the letter
was not there? Very well: back to the cab! another tip; hurry! hurry!
hurry! His mother's house, the steps, his key in the lock--again and
again his fingers closed on the key-ring in his pocket! letters on the
hall table awaiting him--_her_ letter. Then again the relaxing shock:
suppose it was not there? The thought turned him sick; after the almost
physical recoil from it, came brief moments of longing for his mother's
tender arms, or the remembrance of that baby on the raft. But almost
immediately his mind would return to the treadmill of expectation; get
into the station--take a cab--rush--So it went, on and on, until,
toward dawn, through sheer exhaustion he slept.
That next day was never very clear in David's memory. Only one fact
stood out distinctly in the mists: there was no letter. Afterward, when
he tried to recall that time of discovering that she had not written,
he was confused by the vision of his mother smiling down at him from
the head of the stairs and calling to an unseen maid, "Bring the doctor
a cup of coffee, Mary!" He could remember that he stood sorting out the
letters on the hall table, running them over swiftly, then going
through them slowly, one by one, scanning each address, each post-mark;
then, with shaking hands, shuffling and sorting them like a pack of
cards, and going through them again. _She had not written_. He could
remember that he heard the blood beating in his ears, and at the same
time his mother's voice: "Bring the doctor a cup of coffee." . . . She
had not written.
For months afterward, when he tried to recall that morning, the weak
feeling in his knees, the way the letters that were not from her shook
in his hand, the sound of his mother's joyous voice--these things would
come into his mind together. They were all he could remember of the
whole day; the day when the grave closed over his youth.
After that came hours of expectation, of telegrams back and forth:
"Have you heard where they are?" And: "No news." Weeks of letters
between Robert Ferguson and his mother: "It is what I have always said,
she is her mother's daughter." And: "Oh, don't be so hard on her--and
on her poor, bad mother. Find out where she is, and go and see her."
And: "I will never see her. I'm done with her." But among all the
letters, never any letter from Elizabeth to David.
In those first days he seemed to live only when the mail arrived; but
his passion of expectation was speechless. Indeed his inarticulateness
was a bad factor when it came to recovery from the blow that had been
dealt him. At the moment when the wound was new, he had talked to his
mother; but almost immediately he retreated into silence. And in
silence the worst things in his nature began to grow. Once he tried to
write to Elizabeth; the letter commenced with frantic directions to
come to his mother "at once!" Then his pen faltered: perhaps she did
not care to come? Perhaps she did not wish to leave "him"?--and the
unfinished letter was flung into the fire. With suspicion of Elizabeth
came a contemptuous distrust of human nature in general, and a
shrinking self-consciousness, both entirely foreign to him. He was not
only crushed by loss, but he was stinging with the organic
mortification of the man who has not been able to keep his woman. It
was then that Helena Richie first noticed a harshness in him that
frightened her, and a cynical individualism that began to create its
own code of morals, or at any rate of responsibilities. But before he
shut himself into all this misery, not only of loss, but of suspicion
and humiliation, he did say one thing:
"I'm not going to howl; you needn't be afraid. I shall do my work. You
won't hear me howl." There were times when she wished he would! She
wished it especially when Robert Ferguson wrote that Elizabeth and
Blair were going to return to Mercer, that they would live at the River
House, and that it was evident that the "annulment," to which at first
David's mind had turned so incessantly, was not being thought of. "I
understand from Miss White (of course I haven't heard from or written
to Mrs. Blair Maitland) that she does not wish to take any steps for a
separation," Elizabeth's uncle wrote.
"He _must_ see her when she gets back," Helena Richie said, softly; but
David said nothing at all. At that moment his suspicion became a
certainty; yes, she had loved the fellow! It had been something else
than one of her fits of fury! It had been _love_. ... No wonder, with
this poison working in him, that he shut even his mother out of his
heart. At times the pitying tenderness of her eyes was intolerable to
him; he thought he saw the same pity in everybody's eyes; he felt sure
that every casual acquaintance was thinking of what had happened to
him: he said to himself he wished to God people would mind their
business, and let him mind his! "I'm not howling," he told himself. He
was like a man whose skin has been taken off; he winced at everything,
but all the same, he did his work in the hospital with exhausting
thoroughness; to be sure he gave his patients nothing but technical
care. Whether they lived or died was nothing to David; whether he
himself lived or died was still less to him--except, perhaps, that in
his own case he had a preference. But work is the only real sedative
for grief, and the suffering man worked himself callous, so he had dull
moments of forgetfulness, or at any rate of comparative indifference,
Yet when he received that note from Mrs. Maitland summoning him to her
hotel he flinched under the callousness. However, at a little before
eight o'clock on Tuesday morning, he knocked at her bedroom door.
The Girard House knew Sarah Maitland's eccentricities as well as her
credit; she always asked for a cheap room, and was always put up under
the roof. She had never learned to use her money for her own comfort,
so it never occurred to her to have a parlor for herself; her
infrequent callers were always shown up here to the top of the house.
On this especial morning she had come directly from the train, and when
David arrived she was pacing up and down the narrow room, haggard and
disheveled from a night in the sleeping-car; she had not even taken off
her bonnet. She turned at his step and stopped short in her tracks--he
was so thin, so grim, so old! "Well, David," she said; then hesitated,
for there was just an instant's recoil in David. He had not realized
the fury that would leap up and scorch him like a flame at the sight of
Blair's mother.
"David, you'll--you'll shake hands with me, won't you?" she said
timidly. At the sound of her voice his anger died out; only the cold
ashes of misery were left.
"Why, Mrs. Maitland!" he protested, and took her big, beautiful,
unsteady hand in both of his.
For a moment neither of them spoke. It was a dark, cold morning; far
below them stretched the cheerless expanse of snow-covered roofs; from
countless chimneys smoke was rising heavily to the lowering sky, and
soot was sifting down; the snow on the window-sill was speckled with
black. Below, in the courtyard of the hotel, ice-carts rumbled in and
out, and milk-cans were banged down on the cobblestones; a dull day, an
empty sky, a futile interview, up here in this wretched little room
under the eaves. David wondered how soon he could get away.
"David," Mrs. Maitland said, "I know I can't make it up to you in any
way. But I'd like to."
"You are very kind," he said coldly, "but we won't go into that, if you
please, Mrs. Maitland."
"No, we won't talk about it," she said, with evident relief; "but
David, I came to Philadelphia to say that I want you to let me be of
help to you in some way."
"Help to me?" he repeated, surprised. "I really don't see--"
"Why," she explained, "you want to begin to practise; you don't want to
drudge along at a hospital under some big man's thumb. I want to set
you up!"
David smiled involuntarily, "But the hospital is my greatest chance,
Mrs. Maitland. I'm lucky to have these three years there. But it's kind
in you to think of giving me a hand."
"Nonsense!" she said, quite missing the force of what he said. "You
ought to put out your own shingle. David, you can have all the money
you need; it's yours to take."
David started as if she had struck him: "_yours to take_." Oh, that had
been said to him before! "No, I can't, I couldn't take money! You don't
understand. I couldn't take money from--anybody!" he said with a gasp.
She looked at him helplessly, then stretched out her empty hands.
"David," she said pitifully, "money is all I've got. Won't you take
it?" The tears were on her cheeks and the big, empty hands shook. "I
haven't got anything but money, David," she entreated.
His face quivered; he said some broken, protesting word; then suddenly
he put his arms round her and kissed her. Her gray head, in the
battered old bonnet, rested a moment on his shoulder, and he felt her
sob. "Oh, David," she said, "what shall I do? He--he hates me. He said
the only womanly thing about me was ... Oh, can I make a man of him, do
you think?" She entirely forgot David's wrongs in her cry for comfort,
a cry that somehow penetrated to his benumbed heart, for in his effort
to comfort her he was himself vaguely comforted, For a minute he held
her tightly in his arms until he was sure he could command himself.
When he let her go, she put her hand up in a bewildered way and touched
her cheek; the boy had kissed her! But by that time she was able to go
back to the purpose that had brought her here; she told him to sit down
and then began, dogmatically, to insist upon her plan.
David smiled a little as he explained that, quite apart from any
question of income, the hospital experience was valuable to him. "I
wouldn't give it up, Mrs. Maitland, if I had a million dollars!" he
said, with a convincing exaggeration that was like the old David. "But
it's mighty kind in you. Please believe I do appreciate your kindness."
"No kindness about it," she said impatiently; "my family is in your
debt, David." At which he hardened instantly.
"Well," she said; and was silent for awhile, biting her finger and
looking down at her boots. Suddenly, with a grunt of satisfaction, she
began to hit the arm of her chair softly with her closed fist. "I've
got it!" she said. "I suppose you wouldn't refuse the trusteeship of a
fund, one of these days, to build a hospital? Near my Works, maybe? I'm
all the time having accidents. I remember once getting a filing in my
eye, and--and somebody suggested a doctor to take it out. A doctor for
a filing! I guess _you'd_ have been equal to that job--young as you
are? Still, it wouldn't be bad to have a doctor round, even if he was
young, if anything serious happened. Yes, a hospital near the
Works--first for my men and then for outsiders. It is a good idea! I
suppose you wouldn't refuse to run such a hospital, and draw your
wages, like a man?"
"Well, no, I wouldn't refuse that," he said, smiling. It was many weeks
since David had smiled so frankly. A strange thing had happened in that
moment when he had forgotten himself in trying to comfort Blair's
mother--his corroding suspicion of Elizabeth seemed to melt away! In
its place was to come, a little later, the dreadful but far more
bearable pain of enduring remorse for his own responsibility for
Elizabeth's act. But just then, when he tried to comfort that poor
mother, there was only a breaking of the ice about his own heart in a
warm gush of pity for her.... "I don't see that there's much chance of
funds for hospitals coming my way," he said, smiling.
"You never can tell," said Mrs. Maitland.