"Do you think," Robert Ferguson wrote Mrs. Richie about the middle of
September--"do you think you could come to Mercer for a little while
and look after Nannie? The poor child is so unhappy and so incapable of
making up her mind about herself that I am uneasy about her."
"Of course I will go," Mrs. Richie told her son.
David had come down to the little house on the seashore to spend Sunday
with her, and in the late afternoon they were sitting out on the sand
in a sunny, sheltered spot watching the slow, smooth heave of the quiet
sea. David's shoulder was against her knee, his pipe had gone out, and
he was looking with lazy eyes at the slipping sparkle of sunshine on
the scarcely perceptible waves; sometimes he lifted his marine glasses
to follow a sail gleaming like a white wing against the opalescent east.
"I wonder why Nannie is unhappy," he ruminated; "she was never, poor
little Nannie! capable of appreciating Mrs. Maitland; so I don't
suppose she loved her?"
"She loved her as much as she could," Mrs. Richie said; "and that is
all any of us can do, David. But she misses her. If a mountain went out
of your landscape, wouldn't you feel rather blank? Well, Nannie's
mountain has gone. Yes; I'll go and stay with her, poor child, for a
while, and perhaps bring her back for a fortnight with us--if you
wouldn't mind?"
"Of course I wouldn't mind. Bring her along."
"I wonder if you could close this house for me?" she said; "I don't
like to shut it up now and leave you without a roof over your head in
case you had a chance to take a day off."
"Of course I can close it," he said; and added that if he couldn't shut
up a bandbox of a summer cottage he would be a pretty useless member of
society. "I'll come down the first chance I get in the next fortnight.
. . . Mother, I suppose you will see--_her?_"
Mrs. Richie gave him a startled look. "I suppose I shall."
He was silent for several minutes. She did not dare to help him by a
word. Then, as if he had wrenched the question up by the roots, torn it
out of his sealed heart, he said, "Do you suppose she cares for him?"
It was the first time in these later speechless months that he had
turned to her. Steadying herself on that advice of Robert Ferguson's:
'when he does blurt it out don't get excited,' she answered, calmly
enough, "I don't know."
He struck his heel down into the sand, then pulled out his knife and
began to clean the bowl of his pipe. The blade trembled in his hand.
"Until I saw her in May," he said, "I suppose I really thought--I
didn't formulate it, but I suppose I thought . . ."
"What?"
"That somehow I would get her yet."
"Oh, David!" she breathed.
He glanced at her cynically. "Don't get agitated, Materna. That May
visit cured me. I know I won't. I know she doesn't care for me. But I
can't tell whether she cares for him."
"I hope she does," she said.
At which he laughed: "Do you expect me to agree to that?"
"David, think what you are saying!"
"My dear mother, have you been under the impression that I am a saint?"
he said, dryly. "If so let me correct you. I am not. Yes, until I went
out there in May I always had the feeling that I would get her,
somehow, some time." He paused; his knife scraped the bowl of his pipe
until the fresh wood showed under the blade. "I don't know that I ever
exactly admitted it to myself; but I realize now that the feeling was
there."
"You shock me very much," she said; and leaning against her knee he
felt the quiver that ran through her.
"I have shocked myself several times in the last few years," he said,
briefly.
His mother was silent. Suddenly he began to talk:
"At first--I mean when it happened; I thought she would send for me,
and I would take her away from him, and then kill him." Her broken
exclamation made him laugh. "Don't worry; I was terribly young in those
days. I got over all that. It was only just at first; it was the
everlasting human impulse. The cave-dweller had it, I suppose, when
somebody stole his woman. But it's only the body that wants to kill.
The mind knows better. The mind knows that life can be a lot better
punishment than death. I knew he'd get his punishment and I was willing
to wait for it. I thought that when she left him, his hell would be as
hot as mine. I took it for granted that she would leave him. I thought
there would be a divorce, and then"--his voice was smothered to the
breaking-point; "then I would get her. Or I would get her without a
divorce."
"David!"
He did not seem to hear her; his elbows were on his knees, his chin on
his two fists; he spoke as if to himself; "Well; she didn't leave him.
I suppose she couldn't forgive me. Curious, isn't it? how the mind can
believe two entirely contradictory things at the same time: I realized
she couldn't forgive me,--yet I still thought I would get her, somehow.
Meantime, I consoled myself with the reflection that even if she hated
me for having pushed her into his arms, she hated him worse. I thought
that where I had been stabbed once, he would be stabbed a thousand
times." David spoke with that look of primitive joy which must have
been on the face of the cave-dweller when he felt the blood of his
enemy spurt warm between his fingers.
Helena Richie gave a little cry and shrank back. These were the
thoughts that her boy had built up between them in these silent years!
He gave her a faintly amused glance.
"Yes, I had my dreams. Bad dreams you would call them, Materna. Now I
don't dream any more. After I saw her in May, I got all over such
nonsense. I realized that perhaps she . . . loved him."
His mother was trembling. "It frightens me that you should have had
such thoughts," she said. She actually looked frightened; her
leaf-brown eyes were wide with terror.
Her son nuzzled his cheek against her hand; "Bless your dear heart! it
frightens you, because you can't understand. Materna, there are several
things you can't understand--and I shouldn't like it if you could!" he
said, his face sobering with that reverent look which a man gives only
to his mother; "There is the old human instinct, that existed before
laws or morals or anything else, the man's instinct to keep his woman.
And next to that, there is the realization that when it comes to what
you call morals, there is a morality higher than the respectability you
good people care so much about--the morality of nature. But of course
you don't understand," he said again, with a short laugh.
"I understand a good many things, David."
"Oh, well, I didn't mean to talk about it," he said, sighing; "I don't
know what started me; and--and I'm not howling, you know. I was only
wondering whether _you_ thought she had come to care for him?"
"I don't know," she said, faintly.
He snapped his knife shut. "Neither do I. But I guess she does. Nature
is a big thing, Materna. When a girl's loyalty comes up against that,
it hasn't much show; especially when nature is assisted by behavior
like mine. Yes, I guess by this time she loves him. I'll never get her."
"Oh, David," his mother said, tremulously, "if you could only meet some
nice, sweet girl, and--"
"Nice girl?" he said, smiling. "They're scarce, Materna, they're
scarce. But I mean to get married one of these days. A man in my trade
ought to be married. I sha'n't bother to look for one of those 'sweet
girls,' however. I've got over my fondness for sugar. No more
sentimentalities for me, thank you. I shall marry on strictly
common-sense principles: a good housekeeper, who has good sense, and
good looks--"
"And a good temper, I hope," Mrs. Richie said, almost with temper
herself; and who can blame her?--he had been so cruelly injured! The
sweetness, the silent, sunny honesty of the boy, the simple belief in
the goodness of his fellow-creatures, had been changed to this! Oh, she
could almost hate the girl who had done it! "A good temper is more
important than anything else," she said, hotly.
Instantly the dull cynicism of his face flashed into anger.
"Elizabeth's temper,--I suppose that is what you are referring to; her
temper was not responsible for what happened. It was my assinine
conceit."
She winced. "I didn't mean to hurt you," she said. He was silent. "But
it is terrible to have you so hard, David."
"Hard? I? I am a mush of amiability. Come now! I oughtn't to have made
you low-spirited. It's all an old story. I was only telling you how I
felt at first. As for bad thoughts,--I haven't any thoughts now, good
or bad! I am a most exemplary person. I don't know why I slopped over
to you, anyhow. So don't think of it again. Materna! Can you see that
sail?" He was looking through his glasses; "it's the eleventh since we
came out here."
"But David, that you should think--"
"Oh, but I don't think any more," he declared, watching the flitting
white gleam on the horizon; "I always avoid thinking, nowadays. That's
why I am such a promising young medical man. I'm all right and
perfectly happy. I'll hold my base, I promise you! That's a brig,
Materna. Do you know the difference between a brig and a schooner? I
bet you don't."
Apparently the moment of confidence was over; he had opened his heart
and let her see the blackness and bleakness; and now he was closing it
again. She was silent. David thrust his pipe into his pocket and turned
to help her to rise; but she had hidden her face in her hands. "It is
my fault," she said, with a gasp; "it must be my fault! Oh, David, have
I made you wicked? If you had had a different mother--" Instantly he
was ashamed of himself.
"Materna! I am a brute to you," he said. He flung his arm around her,
and pressed his face against hers; "I wish somebody would kick me. You
made me wicked? You are the only thing that has kept me anyways
straight! Mother--I've been decent; your goodness has saved me
from--several things. I want you to know that. I would have gone right
straight to the devil if it hadn't been for your goodness. As for how I
felt about Elizabeth, it was just a mood; don't think of it again."
"But you said," she whispered; "_without_ a divorce."
"Well, I--I didn't mean it, I guess," he comforted her; "anyhow, the
jig is up, dear. Even if I had a bad moment now and then in the first
year, nothing came of it. Oh, mother, what a beast I am!" He was
pressing his handkerchief against her tragic eyes. "Your fault? Your
only fault is being so perfect that you can't understand a poor critter
like me!"
"I do understand. I do understand."
In spite of himself, David laughed. "You! That's rich." He looked at
her with his old, good smile, tender and inarticulate. "What would I
have done without you? You've stood by and put up with my cussedness
through these three devilish years. It's almost three years, you know,
and yet I--I don't seem to get over it--Oh, I'm a perfect _girl_! How
can you put up with me?" He laughed again, and hugged her. "Mother,
sometimes I almost wish you weren't so good."
"David," she burst out passionately, "I am--" She stopped, trembling.
"I take it back," he apologized, smiling; "I seem bent on shocking you
to-day. You can be as good as you want. Only, once in a while you do
seem a little remote. Elizabeth used to say she was afraid of you."
"Of _me!_"
"Well, an angel like you never could quite understand her," he said,
soberly.
His mother was silent; then she said in a low voice:
"I am not an angel; but perhaps I haven't understood her. I can
understand love, but not hate. Elizabeth never loved you; she doesn't
know the meaning of love."
"You are mistaken, dear," he said, gently.
They went back to the house very silently; David's confidences were
over, but they left their mark on his mother's face. She showed the
strain of that talk even a week later when she started on her kindly
mission to cheer poor Nannie. On the hazy September morning, when
Robert Ferguson met her in the big, smoky station at Mercer, there were
new lines of care in her face. Her landlord, as he persisted in calling
himself, noticed them, and was instantly cross; crossness being his way
of expressing anxiety.
"You look tired," he scolded, as he opened the carriage door for her,
"you've got to rest at my house and have something to eat before you go
to Nannie's; besides, you don't suppose I got you on here just to cheer
her? You've got to cheer me, too! It's enough to give a man melancholia
to live next to that empty house of yours, and you owe it to me to be
pleasant--if you can be pleasant," he barked.
But his barking was strangely mild. His words were as rough as ever,
but he spoke with a sort of eager gentleness, as if he were trying to
make his voice soft enough for some unuttered pitifulness. She was so
pleased to see him, and to hear the kind, gruff voice, that for a
minute she forgot her anxiety about David, and laughed. And when her
eyes crinkled in that old, gay way, it seemed to Robert Ferguson,
looking at her with yearning, as if Mercer, and the September haze, and
the grimy old depot hack were suddenly illuminated.
"Oh, these children!" he said; "they are worrying me to death. Nannie
won't budge out of that old house; it will have to be sold over her
head, to get her into a decent locality. Elizabeth isn't well, but the
Lord only knows what's the matter with her. The doctor says she's all
right, but she's as grumpy a--her uncle; you can't get a word out of
her. And Blair has been speculating,"--he was so cross that, when at
his own door he put out his hand to help her from the carriage, she
patted his arm, and said, "Come; cheer up!"
At which, smiling all over his face, he growled at her that it was a
pretty thing to expect a man to cheer up, with an empty house on his
hands. "You seem to think I'm made of money! You take the house _now_;
don't wait till that callow doctor is ready to settle down here. If
you'll move in now, I'll cheer up--and give Elizabeth the rent for
pin-money." He was really cheerful by this time just because he was
able to scold her, but behind his scolding there was always this new
gentleness. Later, when he spoke again of the house, her face fell.
"I am doubtful about our coming to Mercer."
"Doubtful?" he said; "what's all this? There never was a woman yet who
knew her own mind for a day at a time--except Mrs. Maitland. You told
me that David was coming here next spring, and I've been keeping this
house for you; I've lost five months' rent"--there was a worried note
in his voice; "what in thunder?" he demanded.
Mrs. Richie sighed. "I don't suppose I ought to tell you, but I can't
seem to help it. I discovered the other day that David is not
heart-whole, yet. He is dreadfully bitter; dreadfully! I don't believe
it's prudent for him to live in Mercer. Do you? He would be constantly
seeing Elizabeth."
She had had her breakfast, and they had gone into Mr. Ferguson's garden
so that he might throw some crumbs to the pigeons and smoke his morning
cigar before taking her to the Maitland house. They were sitting now in
the long arbor, where the Isabella grapes were ripening sootily in the
sparse September sunshine which sifted down between the yellowing
leaves, and touched Mrs. Richie's brown hair; Robert Ferguson saw, with
a pang, that there were some white threads in the soft locks. His eyes
stung, so he barked as gruffly as he could.
"Well, suppose he does see her? You can't wrap him up in cotton batting
for the rest of his life. That's what you've always tried to do, you
hen with one chicken! For the Lord's sake, let him alone. Let him take
his medicine like any other man. After he gets over the nasty taste of
it, he'll find there's sugar in the world yet; just as I did. Only I
hope he won't be so long about it as I was."
She sighed, and her soft eyes filled. "But you don't know how he
talked. Oh, I can't help thinking it must be my fault! If he had had
another kind of a mother, if his own mother had lived--"
"Own grandmother!" said Robert Ferguson, disgustedly; "the only trouble
with you as a mother, is that you've been too good to the cub. If you'd
knocked his head against the wall once or twice, you'd have made a man
of him. My dear, you really must not be a goose, you know. It's the one
thing I can't stand. Helena," he interrupted himself, chuckling, "you
will be pleased to know that Cherry-pie (begging her pardon!) thinks
that David will ultimately console himself by falling in love with
Nannie! 'It would be very nice,' she says."
They both laughed, then David's mother sighed: "But just think how
delightful to feel that life is as simple as that," she said.
Robert Ferguson picked a grape, and took careful aim at a pigeon;
"Helena," he said, in a low voice, "before you see Nannie, perhaps I
ought to tell you something. I wouldn't, only I know she will, and you
ought to understand it. Can you keep a secret?"
"I can," Mrs. Richie said briefly.
"I believe it," he said, with a sudden dryness. Then he told her the
story of the certificate.
"What! Nannie forged? _Nannie!_"
"We don't use that word; it isn't pretty. But that's what it amounts
to, of course. And that's where David's money went."
"I suppose Mrs. Maitland changed her mind at the last," Mrs. Richie
said; "well, I'm glad she did. It would have been too cruel if she
hadn't given something to Blair."
"I don't think she did," he declared; "changing her mind wasn't her
style; she wasn't one of your weak womanish creatures. _She_ wouldn't
have said she was coming to live in Mercer, and then tried to back out
of it! No, she simply wrote Blair's name by mistake. Her mind wandered
constantly in those last days. And seeing what she had done, she didn't
indorse it."
Mrs. Richie looked doubtful. "I think she meant it for him."
Robert Ferguson laughed grimly. "_I_ think she didn't; but you'll be a
great comfort to Nannie. Poor Nannie! She is unhappy, but not in the
least repentant. She insists that she did right! Would you have
supposed that a girl of her age could be so undeveloped, morally?"
"She's only undeveloped legally," she amended; "and what can you
expect? What chance has she had to develop in any way?"
"She had the chance of living with one of the finest women I ever
knew," he said, stiffly, and paused for their usual wrangle about Mrs.
Maitland. As they rose to go indoors, he looked at his guest, and shook
his head. "Oh, Helena, how conceited you are!"
"I? Conceited?" she said, blankly.
"You think you are a better judge than I am," he complained.
"Nonsense!" she said, blushing charmingly; but she insisted on walking
down to Nannie's, instead of letting him take her in the carriage; a
carriage is not a good place to ward off a proposal.
At the Maitland house she found poor Nannie wandering vaguely about in
the garret. "I am putting away Mamma's clothes," she said, helplessly.
But a minute later she yielded, with tears of relief, to Mrs. Richie's
placid assumption of authority;
"I am going to stay a week with you, and to-morrow I'll tell you what
to do with things. Just now you must sit down and talk to me."
And Nannie sat down, with a sigh of comfort. There were so many things
she wanted to say to some one who would understand! "And you do
understand," she said, sobbing a little. "Oh, I am so lonely without
Mamma! She and I always understood each other. You know she meant the
money for Blair, don't you, Mrs. Richie? Mr. Ferguson won't believe me!"
"Yes; I am sure she did," Mrs. Richie said, heartily; "but dear, you
ought not to have--"
Nannie, comforted, said: "Well, perhaps not; considering that I can
give it to him. But I didn't know that, you know, when I did it."
Pretty much all that day, poor Nannie poured out her full little heart
to her kind listener; they sat down together at the office-dining-room
table--at the head of which stood a chair that no one ever dreamed of
occupying; and Harris shuffled about as he had for nearly thirty years,
serving coarse food on coarse china, and taking a personal interest in
the conversation. After dinner they went into Nannie's parlor that
smelt of soot, where the little immortal canvas still hung in its
gleaming gold frame near the door, and the cut glass of the great
chandeliers sparkled faintly through slits in the old brown
paper-muslin covers. Sometimes, as they talked, the house would shake,
and Nannie's light voice be drowned in the roar of a passing train
whose trail of smoke brushed against the windows like feathers of
darkness. But Nannie gave no hint that she would ever go away and leave
the smoke and noise, and just at first Mrs. Richie made no such
suggestion. She did nothing but infold the vague, frightened, unhappy
girl in her own tranquillity. Sometimes she lured her out to walk or
drive, and once she urged her to ask Elizabeth and Blair to come to
supper.
"Oh, Blair won't come while you are here!" Nannie said, simply; and the
color came into David's mother's face. "I know," Nannie went on, "that
Elizabeth thinks Mamma meant that money for David. And she is not
pleased because Mr. Ferguson won't make the executors give it to him."
Mrs. Richie laughed. "Well, that is very foolish in Elizabeth; nobody
could give your mother's money to David. I must straighten that out
with Elizabeth."
But she did not have a chance to do so; Elizabeth as well as Blair
preferred not to come to the old house while David's mother was there.
And Mrs. Richie, unable to persuade Nannie to go back to Philadelphia
with her, stayed on, in the kindness of her heart, for still another
week. When she finally fixed a day for her return, she said to herself
that at least Blair and Elizabeth would not be prevented by her
presence from doing what they could to cheer Nannie.
"But is she going to live on in that doleful house forever?" Robert
Ferguson protested.
"She's like a poor little frightened snail," Helena Richie said. "You
don't realize the shock to her of that night when she--she tried to do
what she thought Mrs. Maitland wanted to have done. She is scared
still. She just creeps in and out of that dingy front door, or about
those awful, silent rooms. It will take time to bring her into the
sunshine."
"Helena," he said, abruptly--she and Nannie had had supper with him and
were just going home; Nannie had gone up-stairs to put on her hat.
"Helena, I've been thinking a good deal about your cruelty to me."
She laughed: "Oh, you are impossible!"
"No, I'm only permanent. Don't laugh; just listen to me." He was
evidently nervous; the old friendly bullying had been put aside; he was
very grave, and was plainly finding it difficult to say what he wanted
to say: "I don't know what your reason is for refusing me, but I know
it isn't a good reason. You are fond of me, and yet you keep on saying
'no' in this exasperating way;--upon my word," he interrupted himself,
despairingly, "I could shake you, sometimes, it is so exasperating! You
like me, well enough; but you won't marry me."
"No, I won't," she assured him, gently.
"It is so unreasonable of you," he said, simply, "that it makes me
think you've got some bee in your bonnet: some silly woman-notion. You
think--Heaven knows what you think! perhaps that--that you ought not to
marry because of something--anything--" he stammered with earnestness;
"but I want you to know this: that I don't _care_ what your reason is!
You may have committed murder, for all the difference it makes to me."
The clumsy and elaborate lightness of his words trembled with the
seriousness of his voice. "You may have broken every one of the Ten
Commandments; _I_ don't care! Helena, do you understand? It's nothing
to me! You may have broken--_all of them_." He spoke with solemn
passion, holding out his hands toward her; his voice shook, but his
melancholy face was serene with knowledge and understanding. "Oh, my
dear," he said, "I love you and you are fond of me. That's all I care
about! Nothing else, nothing else."
Her start of attention, her dilating eyes, made the tears spring to his
own eyes. "Helena, you do believe me, don't you?"
She could not answer him; she had grown pale and then red, then pale
again. "Oh," she said in a whisper, "you are a good man! What have I
done to deserve such a friend? But no, dear friend, no."
He struck her shoulder heavily, as if she had been another man. "Well,
anyway," he said, "you'll remember that when you are willing, I am
waiting?"
She nodded. "I shall never forget your goodness," she said, brokenly.
He did not try to detain her with arguments or entreaties, but as she
turned toward the library door he suddenly pushed it shut, and quietly
took her in his arms and kissed her.
She went away quite speechless. She did not even remember to say
good-night and good-by to Miss White, although she was to leave Mercer
the next morning. When Blair heard that Mrs. Richie was coming to stay
with Nannie he said, briefly, "I won't come in while she is here." He
wrote to his sister during those three weeks and sent her
flowers--kindness to Nannie was a habit with Blair; and indeed he
really missed seeing her, and was glad for other reasons than his own
embarrassment when he heard that her visitor was going away. "I
understand Mrs. Richie takes the 7.30 to-night," he said to his wife.
Elizabeth was silent; it did not occur to her to mention that she had
seen Nannie and heard that Mrs. Richie had decided to stay over another
night. She rarely volunteered any information to Blair.
"Elizabeth," he said, "what do you say to going down to Willis's for
supper, and rowing home in the moonlight? We can drop in and see Nannie
on the way back to the hotel--after Mrs. Richie has gone." He saw some
listless excuse trembling on her lips, and interrupted her: "Do say
'yes'! It is months since we have been on the river."
She hesitated, then seemed to reach some sudden decision. "Yes," she
said, "I'll go."
Blair's face lighted with pleasure. Perhaps the silence which had
hardened between them since the day the question of his money had been
discussed would break now.
The late afternoon was warm with the yellow haze of October sunshine
when they walked out over the bridge to the toll-house wharf, where
Blair hired a boat. He made her as comfortable as he could in the
stern, and when he gave her the tiller-ropes she took them in a
business-like way, as if really entering into the spirit of his little
expedition. A moment later they were floating down the river; there was
nearly half a mile of furnaces and slag-banked shore before they left
Mercer's smoke and grime behind them and began to drift between
low-lying fields or through narrow reaches where the vineyard-covered
hills came down close to the water.
"Elizabeth, what do you say to going East next month?" Blair said;
"perhaps we can persuade Nannie to go, too."
She was leaning back against the cushions he had arranged for her,
holding her white parasol so that it hid her face. "I don't see," she
said, "how you can afford to travel much; where will you get the money?"
"Oh, it has all been very easily arranged; Nannie can draw pretty
freely against the estate now, and she makes me an 'allowance,' so to
speak, until things are settled; then she'll hand my principal over to
me. It's a nuisance not to have it now; but we can get along well
enough."
Then Elizabeth asked her question: "And when you get the principal,
what will you do with it?"
"Invest it; pretty tough, isn't it, when you think what I ought to have
had?"
"And when," said Elizabeth, very softly, "will you build the hospital?"
She lifted her parasol slightly, and gave him a look that was like a
knife; then lowered it again.
"Build the hospital! What hospital?"
"The hospital near the Works, that your mother put that money aside
for."
Blair's hands tightened on his oars. Instinctively he knew that a
critical moment was confronting him. He did not know just what the
danger in it was, but he knew there was danger. "My mother changed her
mind about that, Elizabeth."
She lifted the parasol again, and looked full at him; the white shadow
of the silk made the dark amber of her unsmiling eyes singularly
luminous. "No," she said; "your mother did not change her mind. Nannie
thought she did, but it was not so." She spoke with stern certainty.
"Your mother didn't mean you to have that money. She meant it for--a
hospital."
Blair stopped rowing and leaned on his oars. "Why don't you speak his
name?" he said, between his teeth.
The parasol fell back on her shoulder; she grew very white; the hard
line that used to be a dimple was like a gash in her cheek; she looked
suddenly old. "I will certainly speak his name: _David Richie_. Your
mother meant the money for David Richie."
"That," said Blair, "is a matter of opinion. You think she did. I think
she didn't. I think she meant it for the person whose name she wrote on
the certificate. That person will keep it."
Elizabeth was silent. Blair began to row again, softly. The anger in
his face died out and left misery behind it. Oh, how she hated him; and
how she loved--_him_. At that moment Blair hated David as one only
hates the human creature one has injured. They did not speak again for
the rest of the slow drift down to Willis's. Once Blair opened his lips
to bid her notice that the overhanging willows and chestnuts mirrored
themselves so clearly in the water that the skiff seemed to cut through
autumnal foliage, and the sound of the ripple at the prow was like the
rustle of leaves; but the preoccupation in her face silenced him. It
was after four when, brushing past a fringe of willows, the skiff
bumped softly against a float half hidden in the yellowing sedge and
grass at Willis's landing. Blair got out, and drawing the boat
alongside, held up his hand to his wife, but she ignored his
assistance. As she sprang lightly out, the float rocked a little and
the water splashed over the planks. There was a dank smell of wet wood
and rankly growing water-weeds. A ray of sunshine, piercing the roof of
willow leaves, struck the single blossom of a monkey-flower, that
sparkled suddenly in the green darkness like a topaz.
"Elizabeth," Blair said in a low voice--he was holding the gunwale of
the boat and he did not look at her; "Elizabeth, all I want money for
is to give you everything you want." She was silent. He made the skiff
fast and followed her up the path to the little inn on the bank. There
were some tables out under the locust-trees, and a welcoming landlord
came hurrying to meet them with suggestions of refreshments.
"What will you have?" Blair asked.
"Anything--nothing; I don't care," Elizabeth said; and Blair gave an
order he thought would please her.
Below them the river, catching the sunset light, blossomed with a
thousand stars. Elizabeth watched the dancing glitter absently; when
Blair, forgetting for a moment the depression of the last half-hour,
said impulsively, "Oh, how beautiful that is!" she nodded, and came out
of her abstraction to call his attention to the reflected gold of a
great chestnut on the other side of the stream.
"Are you warm enough?" he asked. He said to himself, with a sigh of
relief, that evidently she had dropped the dangerous subject of the
hospital. "There is a chill in these October evenings as the sun goes
down," he reminded her.
"Yes."
"Elizabeth," he burst out, "why can't we talk sometimes? Haven't we
anything in common? Can't we ever talk, like ordinary husbands and
wives? You would show more civility to a beggar!" But as he spoke the
waiter pushed his tray between them, and she did not answer. When Blair
poured out a glass of wine for her she shook her head.
"I don't want anything."
He looked at her in despair: "I love you. I suppose you wouldn't
believe me if I should try to tell you how I love you--and yet you
don't give me a decent word once a month!"
"Blair," she said, quietly, "that is final, is it--about the money? You
are going to keep it?"
"I am certainly going to keep it."
Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "It is final," she repeated, slowly.
"You are angry," he cried, "because I won't give the money my mother
gave me, all the money I have in the world, to the man whom you threw
off like an old glove!"
"No," she said, slowly, "I don't _think_ I am angry. But it seems
somehow to be more than I can bear; a sort of last straw, I suppose,"
she said, smiling faintly. "But I'm not angry, I think. Still, perhaps
I am. I don't really know."
Blair struck a match under the table. His hand holding his cigarette
trembled. "To the best of my knowledge and belief, Elizabeth, I am
honest. I believe my mother meant me to have that money. She did not
mean to have it go to--to a hospital."
Elizabeth dug the ferrule of her parasol into the gravel at her feet.
"It is David's money. You took his wife. Now you are taking his money.
. . . You can't keep both of them." She said this very gently, so
gently that for a moment he did not grasp the sense of her words. When
he did it seemed to him that she did not herself realize what she had
said, for immediately, in the same calmly matter-of-fact way, she began
to speak of unimportant things: the river was very low, wasn't it? What
a pity they were cutting the trees on the opposite hill. "They are
burning the brush," she said; "do you smell the smoke? I love the smell
of burning brush in October." She was simpler and pleasanter than she
had been for a long time. But he could not know that it was because she
felt, inarticulately, that her burden had been lifted; she herself
could not have said why, but she was almost happy. Blair was confused
to the point of silence by her abrupt return to the commonplace. He
glanced at her with furtive anxiety. "Oh, see the moon!" Elizabeth
said, and for a moment they watched the great disk of the Hunter's moon
rising in the translucent dusk behind the hills.
"That purple haze in the east is like the bloom on a plum," Blair said.
"I think we had better go now," Elizabeth said, rising. But though she
had seemed so friendly, she did not even turn her head to see if he
were following her, and he had to hurry to overtake her as she went
down the path to the half-sunken float that was rocking slightly in the
grassy shallows. As he knelt, steadying the boat with one hand, he held
the other up to her, and this time she did not repulse him; but when
she put her hand into his, he kissed it with abrupt, unhappy
passion,--and she drew it from him sharply. When she took her place in
the stern and lifted the tiller-ropes she looked at him, gathering up
his oars, with curious gentleness. . . .
She was sorry for him, for he seemed to care so much;--and this was the
end! She had tried to bear her life. Nobody could imagine how hard she
had tried; life had been her punishment, so with all her soul and all
her body, she had tried to bear it! But this was the end. It was not
possible to try any more. "I have borne it as long as I can," she
thought. Yet as she had said, she was not angry. She wondered, vaguely,
listening to the dip of the oars, at this absence of anger. She had
been able to talk about the bonfires, and she had thought the moon
beautiful. No; she was not angry. Or if she were, then her anger was
unlike all the other angers that had scourged and torn the surface of
her life; they had been storms, all clamor and confusion and blinding
flashes, with more or less indifference to resulting ruin. But this
anger, which could not be recognized as anger, was a noiseless
cataclysm in the very center of her being; a tidal wave, that was
lifting and lifting, moving slowly, too full for sound, in the
resistless advance of an absorbing purpose of ruin. "I am not angry,"
she said to herself; "but I think I am dying."
The pallor of her face frightened Blair, who was straining at his oars
against the current: "Elizabeth! What is the matter? Shall I stop?
Shall we go ashore? You are ill!"
"No; I'm not. Go on, please."
"But there is something the matter!"
She shook her head. "Don't stop. We've gone ever so far down-stream,
just in this minute."
Blair looked at her anxiously. A little later he tried to make her
talk; asked her how she felt, and called her attention to the bank of
clouds that was slowly climbing up the sky. But she was silent. As
usual, she seemed to have nothing to say to him. He rowed steadily, in
long, beautiful strokes, and she sat watching the dark water lap and
glimmer past the side of the skiff. As they worked up-stream, the sheen
of oil began to show again in faint and rocking iridescence; once she
leaned over and touched the water with her fingers; then looked at them
with a frown.
"Look out!" Blair said; "trim a little, will you?"
She sat up quickly: "I wonder if it is easy to drown?"
"Mighty easy--if you lean too hard on the gunwale," he said,
good-naturedly.
"Does it take very long?"
"To drown? I never tried it, but I believe not; though I understand
that it's unpleasant while it lasts." He watched her wistfully; if he
could only make her smile!
"I suppose dying is generally unpleasant," she said, and glanced down
into the black oily water with a shiver.
It was quite dark by this time, and Blair was keeping close to the
shore to avoid the current narrowing between the piers of the old
bridge. When they reached Mrs. Todd's wharf Elizabeth was still staring
into the water.
"It is so black here, so dirty! I wouldn't like to have it touch me.
It's cleaner down at Willis's," she said, thoughtfully. Blair, making
fast at the landing, agreed: "Yes, if I wanted a watery grave I'd
prefer the river at Willis's to this." Then he offered her a pleading
hand; but she sat looking at the water. "How clean the ocean is,
compared to a river," she said; then noticed his hand. She took it
calmly enough, and stepped out of the boat. She had forgotten, he
thought, her displeasure about the money; there was only the usual
detachment. When he said it was too early to go to Nannie's,--"it isn't
seven yet, and Mrs. Richie won't leave the house until a quarter past;"
she agreed that they had better go to the hotel.
"What do you say to the theater to-night?" he asked. But she shook her
head.
"You go; I would rather be alone."
"I hear there's a good play in town?"
She was silent.
Blair said something under his breath with angry hopelessness. This was
always the way so far as any personal relation between them went; she
did not seem to see him; she did not even hear what he was saying. "You
always want to be alone, so far as I am concerned," he said. She made
no answer. After dinner he took himself off. "She doesn't want me
round, so I'll clear out," he said, sullenly; he had not the heart even
to go to Nannie's. "I'll drop into the theater, or perhaps I'll just
walk," he thought, drearily. He wandered out into the street, but the
sky had clouded over and there was a soft drizzle of rain, so he turned
into the first glaring entrance that yawned at him from the pavement.