Of course, after a while, as time passed, all the people who had been
caught in the storm the two reckless creatures had let loose, shook
down again into their grooves, and the routine of living went on. There
are few experiences more bewildering to the unhappy human heart than
this of discovering that things do go on. Innumerable details of the
unimportant flood in and fill up the cracks and breaches that grief has
made in the structure of life; we continue to live, and even to find
life desirable!
Miss White had been the first to realize this; her love for Elizabeth,
being really (poor old maid!) maternal, was independent of respect, so
almost the next day she had been able to settle down with complete
happiness into the old habit of loving. Blair's mother was the next to
get into the comfortable track of routine; the very day after she came
back from that trip to Philadelphia she plunged into business. She did,
however, pause long enough to tell her superintendent how she was going
to "even things up with David."
"I am going to give him a lot of money for a hospital," she said. "I'm
not going to leave it to him; I'm only sixty-two, and I don't propose
to die yet awhile. When I do Blair will probably contest the will. He
can't break it. It's cast-iron. But I don't want David to wait until
I'm dead and gone, and Blair has given up trying to break my will, and
the estate is settled. I'm going to give it to him before I die. In a
year or two, maybe. I'm realizing on securities now--why don't I give
him the securities? My dear sir, what does a doctor know about
securities? Doctors have no more financial sense than parsons--at
least, not much more," she added, with relenting justice. "No; David is
to have his money, snug in the bank--that new bank, on Federal Street.
I told the president I was rolling up a nest-egg for somebody--I could
see he thought it was for Blair! I didn't enlighten him, because I
don't want the thing talked about. When I get the amount I want, I'll
hand Master David a bank certificate of deposit, and with all his airs
about accepting money, he won't be able to help himself! He'll have to
build his hospital, and draw his wages. It will make him independent of
his outside customers, you see. Yes, I guess I can whip the devil round
the stump as well as the next person!" she said, bridling with
satisfaction. So, with an interest and a hope, Sarah Maitland, like
Miss White, found life worth living.
With David's mother the occupation of trying to help David made living
desirable. It also made her a little more remote from other people's
interests. Poor Robert Ferguson discovered this to his cost: it had
occurred to him that now, when they were all so miserable, she might
perhaps "be willing." But she was not. When, a day or two after he had
gone to see Elizabeth, he went to Philadelphia, Mrs. Richie was
tremulously glad to see him, so that she might pour out her fears about
David and ask advice on this point and that. "Being a man, you
understand better than I do," she acknowledged meekly; then broke down
and cried for her boy's pain. And when the kind, barking old friend,
himself blinking behind misty spectacles, said, "Oh, now, my dear,
don't cry," she was so comforted that she cried some more, and for a
single minute found her head most unexpectedly on his shoulder. But all
the same, she was not "willing."
"Don't ask me, dear Mr. Ferguson," she said, wiping her eyes. "We are
such good friends, and I'm so fond of you, don't let's spoil it all."
"I believe you are fond of me," he said, "and that is why it's so
unreasonable in you not to marry me. I don't ask--impossibilities. But
you do like me; and I love you, you dear, good, foolish woman;--so good
that you couldn't see badness when it lived next door to you!"
"Don't be so hard on people who do wrong," she pleaded; "you make me
afraid of you when you are so hard."
"I'm not hard; Elizabeth is her mother's daughter; that's all." "Oh!"
she cried, with sudden passion, "that poor mother! Can't you forgive
her?"
"No," he said; "I can't."
"You ought to forgive Elizabeth, at any rate," she insisted, faintly;
"and you ought to go and see her."
"Have you forgiven her?" he parried.
She hesitated. "I think I have. I've tried to; but I don't understand
her. I can understand doing something--wicked, for love; but not for
hate."
He gave his meager laugh. "If forgiveness was a question of
understanding, I'm afraid you'd be as hard on her mother as I am."
"On the contrary," she said, vehemently, "if I forgive Elizabeth, it is
for her mother's sake." Then she broke out, almost with tears: "Oh, how
can you be so unkind as not to go and see the child? The time we need
our friends most is when we have done wrong!"
He was silent.
"Sometimes," she said, "sometimes I wish you would do something wrong
yourself, just to learn to be pitiful!"
"You wish I would do wrong? I'm _always_ doing wrong! I did wrong when
I growled so. But--" he paused; "I believe I _have_ seen Elizabeth," he
said sheepishly; "I believe we kissed and made up." At which even poor,
sad Helena laughed.
But these two old friends discovered, just as Miss White and Blair's
mother had discovered, that life was not over for them, because the
habit of friendship persisted. And by and by, nearly a year later,
David--even David! began to find a reason for living, in his
profession. The old, ardent interest which used to make his eyes dim
with pity, or his heart leap with joy at giving help, was gone; he no
longer cared to cuddle the babies he might help to bring into the
world; and a death-bed was an irritating failure rather than any more
human emotion. So far as other people's hopes and fears went, he was
bitter or else callous, but he began to forget his humiliation, and he
lost his self-consciousness in the serious purpose of success. He did
not talk to his mother of the catastrophe of his life; but he did talk
of other things, and with the old friendly intimacy. She was his only
intimate friend.
Thus, gradually, the little world that loved Elizabeth and Blair fell
back, after the storm of pain and mortification, into the merciful
commonplace of habit and of duty to be done.
But for Elizabeth and Blair there was no going back; they had indeed
fired the Ephesian dome! The past now, to Elizabeth, meant David's
message,--to which, finally, she had been able to listen: "Tell her I
understand; ask her to forgive me." In Blair's past there was nothing
real to which he could return; for him the reality of life had begun
with Love; and notwithstanding the bite of shame, the battle with his
sense of chivalry, that revolted (now and then) at the thought of
holding an unwilling woman as his wife, and the constant dull ache of
jealousy, he had madly happy moments that first year of his marriage.
Elizabeth was his! That was enough for him. His circumstances, which
would have caused most men a good deal of anxiety, were, thanks to his
irresponsibility, very little in his thought. There was still a balance
at his bank which made it possible, without encroaching on Elizabeth's
capital--which he swore he would not do--to live at the old River House
"fairly decently." He was, however, troubled because he could not
propitiate Elizabeth with expensive gifts; and almost immediately after
that interview with his mother, he began to think about an occupation,
merely that he might have more money to spend on his wife. "If I could
only buy her some jewels!" he used to say to himself, with a worried
look. "I want to get you everything you want, my darling," he told her
once.
She made no answer; and he burst out in sudden angry pain: "You don't
care what I do!" Still she did not speak. "You--you are thinking of him
still," he said between set teeth. This constant corroding thought did
not often break through his studied purpose to win her by his
passionately considerate tenderness; when it did, it always ended in
bitterness for him.
"Of course I am thinking of him," she would say, dully; "I never stop
thinking of him."
"I believe you would go back to him now!" he flung at her
"Go back to him? I would go back to him on my hands and knees if he
would take me."
Words like that left him speechless with misery; and yet he was
happy--she was his wife!
When his bank account began to dwindle, he found it easy to borrow; the
fact that he was the son of his mother (and consequently his bills had
always been paid) was sufficient collateral. That he borrowed at a
ruinous interest was a matter of indifference to a man who, having
never earned a dollar, had not the slightest idea of the value of a
dollar. At the end of the first year of his marriage, jewels for
Elizabeth seemed less important to him than her bread and butter; and
it was then that with real anxiety he tried to find something to do.
Again "Sarah Maitland's son" found doors open to him which the ordinary
man, inexperienced and notoriously idle, would have found closed; but
none of them offered what he thought a sufficient salary; and by and by
he realized that very soon he would be obliged, as he expressed it, "to
sponge on Elizabeth"; for, reckless as he was, he knew that his
borrowing capacity must come to an end. When the "sponging" finally
began, he was acutely uncomfortable, which was certainly to his credit.
At any rate, it proved that he was enough of a man to be miserable
under such conditions. When a husband who is young and vigorous lives
idly on his wife's money one of two things happens: he is miserable, or
he degenerates into contentment. Blair was not
degenerating--consequently he was honestly wretched.
His attempts to find something to do were not without humor to his
mother, who kept herself informed, of course, of all his "business"
ventures. "What! he wants the Dalzells to take him on? What for?
Errand-boy? That's all he's good for. But I'm afraid two dollars and a
half a week won't buy him many china beetles!" When Blair essayed a
broker's office she even made an ancient joke to her superintendent:
"If Blair could buy himself for what he is worth to Haines, and sell
himself for what he thinks he's worth, he might make a fair
profit,--and pick up some more old masters."
But she was impatient for him to get through with all this nonsense of
dilly-dallying at making a living by doing things he knew nothing
about! How soon would he get down to hard-pan and knock at her door at
the Works and ask for a job, man-fashion? "That's what I want to know!"
she used to tell Mr. Ferguson, who was silent. He did not want to know
anything about Blair; all he cared for was to help his girl bear the
burden of her folly. He called it "folly" now, and Miss White used to
nod her old head in melancholy agreement. It was only to Robert
Ferguson that Mrs. Maitland betrayed her constant anxiety about her
son; and it was that anxiety which made her keenly sensitive to
Elizabeth's deepening depression. For as the excitement of sacrifice
and punishment wore off, and the strain of every-day living began to
tell, Elizabeth's depression was very marked. She was never angry
now--she had not the energy for anger; and she was never unkind to
Blair; perhaps her own pain made her pitiful of his. But she was
always, as Cherry-pie expressed it, "under a cloud." Mrs. Maitland,
watching her, wondered if she was moody because funds were getting low.
How intensely she hoped that was the reason! "I reckon that money of
hers is coming to an end," she used to think, triumphantly--for she had
known, through Nannie, just when Blair had reached the point at which
he had been obliged to use his wife's capital. Whenever she saw
Elizabeth--who for want of anything better to do came constantly to see
Nannie: she would drop a word or two which she thought might go back to
her son: "We need an extra hand in the office." Or: "How would Blair
like to travel for the Works? We can always take on a traveling man."
She never had the chance to drop her hints to Blair himself. In vain
Nannie urged upon her brother her old plea: "Be nice to Mamma. Do come
and see her. Everything will be all right again if you will only come
and see her!" Nothing moved him. If his mother could be firm, so could
he; he was never more distinctly her son than in his obstinacy.
"If she alters her will," he said, briefly, "I will alter my behavior.
She's not my mother so long as she casts off her son."
Mrs. Maitland seemed to age very much that second year. Her business
was still a furious interest; she stormed her way through every trade
obstacle, occasionally bargaining with her conscience by increasing her
donations to foreign missions; but there was this change of suddenly
apparent age. Instead of the old, clear-eyed, ruthless joy in work,
there was a look of furtive waiting; an anxiety of hope deferred, that
grooved itself into her face. And somewhere in the spring of the third
year, the hoped-for moment approached--necessity began to offer its
beneficent opportunity to her son. In spite of experiments in prudence
in borrowing and in earning, the end of Elizabeth's money was in sight.
When the end was reached, there would be nothing for Blair Maitland but
surrender.
"Shall I cave in now?" he vacillated; he was wandering off alone across
the bridge, fairly aching with indecision, and brooding miserably, not
only over the situation, but over his helplessness to buy his way into
Elizabeth's affections. "She ought to have a carriage; it is
preposterous for my wife to be going round in streetcars. If I could
give her a carriage and a pair of horses!" But of course it was
ridiculous to think of things like that. He could not buy a carriage
for Elizabeth out of her own money--besides, her money was shrinking
alarmingly. It was this passionate desire to propitiate her, as well as
the recognition of approaching necessities, that brought him to the
point where he saw capitulation ahead of him. "I wish I could make up
my mind," he thought, wearily. "Well, if I don't get something to do
pretty soon, it will be made up for me,--I'll _have_ to eat crow! I'll
have to go to the Works and ask for a job. But I swear I won't speak
to--_her!_ It is damnable to have to cave in; I'd starve before I'd do
it, if it wasn't for Elizabeth."
But before the time for eating crow arrived, something happened.