When Blair came home, a little after eleven, she had gone.
At first he did not grasp the significance of her absence. He called to
her from their parlor: "I want to tell you about the play; perfect
trash!" No answer. He glanced through the open door of her bedroom; not
there. He hurried to his own room, crying: "Elizabeth! Where are you?"
Then stood blankly waiting. Had she gone down-stairs? He went out into
the hall and, leaning over the banisters, listened to the
stillness--that unhuman stillness of a hotel corridor; but there was no
bang of an iron door, no clanking rumble of an ascending elevator. Had
she gone out? He looked at his watch, and his heart came up into his
throat; out--at this hour! But perhaps after he had left her, she had
suddenly decided to spend the night at her uncle's or Nannie's. In that
case she would have left word in the office. He was thrusting his arms
into his overcoat and settling his hat on his head, even while he was
dashing downstairs to inquire:
"Has Mrs. Maitland left any message for me?"
The clerk looked vague: "We didn't see her go out, sir. But I suppose
she went by the ladies' entrance. No; she didn't leave any message,
sir."
Blair suddenly knew that he was frightened. He could not have said why.
Certainly he was not conscious of any reason for fright; but some blind
instinct sent a wave of alarm all through him. His knees felt cold;
there was a sinking sensation just below his breast-bone.
"What an ass I am!" he said to himself; "she has gone to her uncle's,
of course." He said something of the kind, with elaborate carelessness,
to the clerk; "if she comes back before I do, just say I have gone out
on an errand." He was frightened, but not to the extent of letting that
inquisitive idiot behind the counter know it. "If he had been attending
to his business," he thought, angrily, "he would have seen her go, and
he could have told me when it was. I'll go to Mr. Ferguson's. Of course
she's there."
He stood on the curb-stone for a minute, looking for a carriage; but
the street was deserted. He could not take the time to go to the
livery-stable. He started hurriedly; once he broke into a run, then
checked himself with the reminder that he was a fool. As he drew near
her uncle's house, he began to defend himself against disappointment:
"She's at Nannie's. Why did I waste time coming here? I know she is at
Nannie's!"
Robert Ferguson's house was dark, except for streaks of light under the
blinds of the library windows. Blair, springing up the front steps,
rang; then held his breath to listen for some one coming through the
hall; his heart seemed smothering in his throat. "I _know_ she isn't
here; she's at Nannie's," he told himself. He was acutely conscious of
the dank smell of the frosted honeysuckle clinging limply to the old
iron trellis that inclosed the veranda; but when the door opened he was
casual enough--except for a slight breathlessness.
"Mr. Ferguson! is Elizabeth here?"
"No," Robert Ferguson said, surprised, "was she coming here?"
"She was to be here, or--or at Nannie's," Blair said, carelessly, "I
didn't know which. I'll go and get her there." His own words reassured
him, and he apologized lightly. "Sorry to have disturbed you, sir.
Good-night!" And he was gone before another question could be asked.
But out in the street he found himself running. "Of course she's at
Nannie's!" he said, panting. He even had a twinge of anger at Elizabeth
for giving him all this trouble. "She ought to have left word," he
thought, crossly. It was a relief to be cross; nothing very serious can
have happened to a person who merely makes you cross. The faint drizzle
of the early evening had turned to rain, which added to his irritation.
"She's all right; and it's confoundedly unpleasant to get soaking wet,"
he reflected. Yes; he was honestly cross. Yet in spite of the
reassurances of his mind and his temper, his body was still frightened;
he was hurrying; his breath came quickly. He dashed on, so absorbed in
denying his alarm that on one of the crossings only a quick leap kept
him from being knocked down by a carriage full of revelers. "Here, you!
Look out! What's the matter with you?" the cab-driver yelled, pulling
his horses back and sidewise, but not before the pole of the hack had
grazed Blair's shoulder. There was a screech of laughter, a woman's
vociferating fright, a whiff of cigar smoke, and a good-natured curse:
"Say, darn you, you're too happy to be out alone, sonny!" Blair did not
hear them. Shantytown, black and silent and wet, huddled before him;
from the smokestacks of the Works banners of flame flared out into the
rain, and against them his mother's house loomed up, dark in the
darkness. At the sight of it all his panic returned, and again he tried
to discount his disappointment: "She isn't here, of course; she has
gone to the hotel. Why didn't I wait for her there? What a fool I am!"
But back in his mind, as he banged the iron gate and rushed up the
steps, he was saying: "If she _isn't_ here--?"
The house was absolutely dark; the fan-light over the great door was
black; there was no faintest glimmer of light anywhere. Everybody was
asleep. Blair rang violently, and pounded on the panels of the door
with both hands. "Nannie! Elizabeth! Harris!--confound the old idiot!
why doesn't he answer the bell? Nannie--"
A window opened on the floor above. "What is it?" demanded a quavering
feminine voice. "Who's there?"
"Nannie! Darn it, why doesn't somebody answer the bell in this house?
Is Elizabeth--" His voice died in his throat.
"Oh, Blair! Is that you? You scared me to death," Nannie called down.
"What on earth is the matter?"
"Is--is Elizabeth here?"
"Elizabeth? No; of course not! Where is she?"
"If I knew, would I be asking you?" Blair called back furiously; "she
must be here!"
"Wait. I'll come down and let you in," Nannie said; he heard a muffled
colloquy back in the room, and then the window closed sharply. Far off,
a church clock struck one. Blair stood with a hand on the doorknob;
through the leaded side-windows he saw a light wavering down through
the house; a moment later Nannie, lamp in hand, shivering in her thin
dressing-gown, opened the door.
"Has she been here this evening?"
"Blair! You scare me to death! No; she hasn't been here. What is the
matter? Your coat is all wet! Is it raining?"
"She isn't at the hotel, and I don't know where she is."
"Why, she's at Mr. Ferguson's, of course!"
"No, she isn't. I've been there."
"She may be at home by this time," Nannie faltered, and Blair,
assenting, was just turning to rush away, when another voice said, with
calm peremptoriness:
"What is the matter?"
Blair turned to see Mrs. Richie. She had come quietly down-stairs, and
was standing beside Nannie. Even in his scared preoccupation, the sight
of David's mother shook him. "I--I thought," he stammered, "that you
had gone home, Mrs. Richie."
"She had a little cold, and I would not let her go until to-morrow
morning," Nannie said; "you always take more cold on those horrid
sleeping-cars." Nannie had no consciousness of the situation; she was
far too alarmed to be embarrassed. Blair cringed; he was scarlet to his
temples; yet under his shame, he had the feeling that he had when, a
little boy, he clung to David's pretty mother for protection.
"Oh, Mrs. Richie," he said, "I am so worried about Elizabeth!"
"What about her?"
"She said something this afternoon that frightened me."
"What?"
But he would not tell her. "It was nothing. Only she was very angry;
and--she will do anything when she is angry." Mrs. Richie gave him a
look, but he was too absorbed to feel its significance. "It was
something about--well, a sort of silly threat. I didn't take it in at
the time; but afterward I thought perhaps she meant something. Really,
it was nothing at all. But--" his voice died in his throat and his eyes
were terrified. There was such pain in his face that before she knew it
David's mother was sorry for him; she even put her hand on his shoulder.
"It was just a mood," she comforted him. And Blair, taking the white,
maternal hand in both of his, looked at her speechlessly; his chin
trembled. Instantly, without words of shame on one side or of
forgiveness on the other, they were back again, these two, in the old
friendship of youth and middle age. "It was a freak," said Mrs. Richie,
soothingly. "She is probably at the hotel by this time. Don't be
troubled, Blair. Go and see. If she isn't at the hotel let me know at
once."
"Yes, yes; I will," Blair said. "She must be there now, of course. I
know there's nothing the matter, but I don't like to have her out so
late by herself." He turned to open the front door, fumbling with haste
over the latch; Nannie called to him to wait and she would get him an
umbrella. But he did not hear her. He was saying to himself that of
course she was at the hotel; and he was off again into the darkness!
As the door banged behind him the two women looked at each other in
dismay. "Oh, Mrs. Richie, what can be the matter?" Nannie said.
"Just one of Elizabeth's moods. She has gone out to walk."
"At this time of night? It's after one o'clock!"
"She is probably safe and sound at the River House now."
"I wish we had one of those new telephone things," Nannie said. "Mamma
was always talking about getting one. Then Blair could let us know as
soon as he gets to the hotel." Nannie was plainly scared; Mrs. Richie
grave and a little cold. She had had, to her amazement, a wave of
tenderness for Blair; the reaction from it came in anger at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was always making trouble! "Poor Blair," she said,
involuntarily. At the moment she was keenly sorry for him; after all,
abominable as his conduct had been, love, of a kind, had been at the
root of it. "I can forgive love," Helena Richie said to herself, "but
not hate. Elizabeth never loved David or she couldn't have done what
she did.... Nothing will happen to her," she said aloud. It occurred to
this gentle woman that nothing ever did happen to the people one felt
could be spared from this world; which wicked thought made her so
shocked at herself that she hardly heard Nannie's nervous chatter: "If
she hasn't come home, Blair will be back here in half an hour; it takes
fifteen minutes to go to the hotel and fifteen minutes to come back. If
he isn't here at a quarter to two, everything is all right."
They went into the parlor and lit the gas; Nannie suggested a fire, but
Mrs. Richie said it wasn't worth while. "We'll be going up-stairs in a
few minutes," she said. She was not really worried about Elizabeth;
partly because of that faintly cynical belief that nothing could happen
to the poor young creature who had made so much trouble for everybody;
but also because she was singularly self-absorbed. Those words of
Robert Ferguson's, when he kissed her in his library, had never left
her mind. She thought of them now when she and Nannie sat down in that
silence of waiting which seems to tingle with speech. The dim light
from the gas-jet by the mantelpiece did not penetrate beyond the
dividing arch of the great room; behind the grand piano sprawling
sidewise between the black marble columns, all was dark. The shadow of
the chandelier, muffled in its balloon of brown paper muslin, made an
island of darkness on the ceiling, and the four big canvases were four
black oblongs outlined in faintly glimmering gilt.
"I remember sitting here with your mother, the night you children were
lost," Mrs. Richie said. "Oh, Nannie dear, you must move out of this
house; it is too gloomy!" But Nannie was not thinking of the house.
"Where _can_ she have gone?" she said.
Mrs. Richie could offer no suggestion. Her explanation to herself was
that Blair and Elizabeth had quarreled, and Elizabeth, in a paroxysm of
temper, had rushed off to spend the night in some hotel by herself. But
she did not want to say this to Nannie. To herself she said that things
did sometimes turn out for the best in this world, after all--if only
David could realize it! "She would have made him dreadfully unhappy,"
Helena Richie thought; "she doesn't know what love means." But alas!
David did not know that he had had an escape. She sighed, remembering
that talk on the beach, and those wicked things he had said,--things
for which she must be in some way to blame. "If he had had a different
mother," she thought, heavily, "he might not have--" A sudden shock of
terror jarred all through her--_could Elizabeth have gone to David?_
The very thought turned her cold; it was as if some slimy, poisonous
thing had touched her. Then common sense came in a wave of relief: "Of
course not! Why should she do such an absurd thing?" But in spite of
common sense, Helena Richie's lips went dry.
"It's a quarter to two," Nannie said. "He hasn't come; she must be at
the hotel."
"I'm sure she is," Mrs. Richie agreed.
"Let's wait five minutes," Nannie said; "but I'm certain it's all
right."
"Of course it's all right," Mrs. Richie said again, and got on her feet
with a shiver of relief.
"It gave me a terrible scare," Nannie confessed, and turned out the
gas. "I had a perfectly awful thought, Mrs. Richie; a wicked thought. I
was afraid she had--had done something to herself. You know she is so
crazy when she is angry, and--"
The front gate banged. Nannie gave a faint scream. "Oh, Mrs. Richie!
Oh--"
It was Helena Richie who opened the door before Blair had even reached
it. "Well? Well?"
"Not there. . . ."