The Iron Woman Part 27

Elizabeth exclaimed, with angry impatience, and Robert Ferguson, chuckling, struck him lightly on the shoulder. "Look out you don't fall over backward trying to stand up straight!" he said.

The possibility of an earlier wedding-day was not referred to again. The next morning they all went up to town together in the train, and Elizabeth, who had recovered from her momentary displeasure, did no more than cast glowing looks at David-- lovely, melting looks of delicate pa.s.sion, as virginal as an opening lily--looks that said, "I wish we did not have to wait!"

For her part, she would have been glad "to go barefoot," if only they might the sooner tread the path of life together.

When they got into Mercer, late in the evening, who should meet them at the station but Blair. Robert Ferguson, with obvious relief, immediately handed his charges over to the young man with a hurried explanation that he must see some one on business before going to his own house. "Take the girls home, will you, Blair?" Blair said that that was what he was there for. His method of taking them home was to put Nannie into one carriage, and get into another with Elizabeth, who, a little surprised, asked where Nannie was.

"It would delay you to go round to our house first," Blair explained. "You forget we live in the slums. And Nannie's in a hurry, so I sent her directly home. She doesn't mind going by herself, you know. Look here, you two girls have been away an abominably long time! I've been terribly lonely--without Nannie."

He had indeed been lonely "without Nannie." In these empty, meaningless weeks at the Works, Blair Maitland had suddenly stumbled against the negations of life. Hitherto, he had known only the easy and delightful a.s.sents of Fate; this was his first experience with the inexorable _No_. A week after the girls went East, he admitted to himself that, had David been out of the way, he would undoubtedly have fallen in love with Elizabeth. "As it is, of course I haven't," he declared. Night after night in those next weeks, as he idled moodily about Mercer's streets, or, lounging across the bridge, leaned on the handrail and watched the ashes from his cigar flicker down into the unseen current below, he said the same thing: "I am not in love with her, and I sha'n't allow myself to be. I won't let it go any farther. But David is no man for a girl like Elizabeth to marry." Then he would fall to thinking just what kind of man Elizabeth ought to marry. Such reflections proved, so he a.s.sured himself, how entirely he knew that she belonged to David. Sometimes he wondered sullenly whether he had not better leave Mercer before she came back? Perhaps it was his G.o.d who made this suggestion; if so, he did not recognize a divine voice. He always decided against such a course. It would be cowardly, he told himself, to keep away from Elizabeth. "I will see her when she gets home, just as usual. To stay away might make her think that I was-- afraid. And I am not in the least, because I am not in love with her, and I shall not allow myself to be." He was perfectly sure of himself, and perfectly sincere, too; what lover has ever understood that love has nothing to do with volition!

Now, alone with her in the old depot carriage, his sureness permitted him to say, significantly,

"I have been terribly lonely--without Nannie."

"I thought you were absorbed in business cares," she told him drolly. "How do you like business, Blair, really?"

"Loathe it," he said succinctly. "Elizabeth, come and take dinner with us to-morrow evening?"

"Oh, Nannie's had enough of me. She's been with me for nearly two months."

"I haven't been with you for two months. Be a good girl, and do some missionary work. Slumming is the fas.h.i.+on, you know. Come and cheer me up. It's been fiendishly stupid without you."

She laughed at his sincerely gloomy voice.

"Come," he urged; "we'll have dinner in the back parlor. Do you remember that awful dinner-party?" He laughed as he spoke, but--being 'sure';--in the darkness of the shabby hack he looked at her intently... . Oh, if David were only out of the way!

"Remember it? I should think I did!" There was no telltale flicker on her smooth cheek; even in the gloom of the carriage he could see that the dark amber of her eyes brimmed over with amus.e.m.e.nt, and the dimple deepened entrancingly. "How could I forget it? Didn't I wear my first long dress to that dinner- party--oh, and my six-b.u.t.ton gloves?"

"I--" said Blair, and paused. "I remember other things than the gloves and long dress, Elizabeth." (Why shouldn't he say as much as that? He was certain of himself, and David was certain of her, so why not speak of what it gave him a rapturous pang to remember?)

But at his words the color whipped into her cheek; her clear brows drew together into a slight frown. "How is your mother, Blair?" she said coldly. "Oh, very well. Can you imagine Mother anything but well? The heat has nearly killed me, but Mother is iron."

"She's perfectly wonderful!"

"Yes; wonderful woman," he agreed carelessly. "Elizabeth, promise you'll come to-morrow evening?"

"Cherry-pie would think it was horrid in me not to stay with her, when I've been away so long."

"I think it's horrid in you not to stay with me."

She laughed; then sighed. "David is working awfully hard, Blair."

"Darn David!" he retorted, laughing. "So am I, if that's any reason for your giving a man your society."

"You! You couldn't work hard to save your life."

"I could, if I had somebody to work for, as David has."

"You'd better get somebody," she said gaily.

"I don't want any second-bests," he declared.

"Donkey!" Elizabeth said good-naturedly. But she was a little surprised, for whatever else Blair was, he was not stupid--and such talk is always stupid. That it had its root in anything deeper than chaffing never occurred to her. They were at her own door by this time, and Blair, helping her out of the carriage, looked into her face, and his veins ran hot.

The next morning, when he went to see Nannie, he was absorbed and irritable. "Girls are queer," he told her; "they marry all kinds of men. But I'll tell you one thing: David is the last man for a girl like Elizabeth. He is perfectly incapable of understanding her."

That was the first day that he did not a.s.sure himself that he "was not in love."

CHAPTER XVII

That autumn, with its heats and brown fogs and sharp frosts, was the happiest time in Sarah Maitland's life--the happiest time, at least, since those brief months of marriage;--_Blair was in the Business!_ "If only his father could see him!" she used to say to herself. Of course, she had moments of disappointment; once or twice moments of anger, even; and once, at any rate, she had a moment of fright. She had summoned her son peremptorily to go with her to watch a certain experiment. Blair appeared, shrinking, bored, absent-minded, nearly an hour later than the time she had set. That put her in a bad humor to start with; but as they were crossing the Yards, her irritation suddenly deepened into dismay: Blair, his lip drooping with disgust at the sights and sounds about him, his hands in his pockets, was lounging along behind her, and she, realizing that he was not at her side, stopped and looked back. He was standing still, looking up, his eyes radiant, his lips parted with delight.

"What is it?" she called. He did not hear her; he stood there, gazing at three white b.u.t.terflies that were zigzagging into a patch of pale blue sky. How they had come into this black and clamorous spot, why they had left their fields of goldenrod and asters farther down the river, who can say? But here they were, darting up and up, crossing, dipping, dancing in the smoky suns.h.i.+ne that flooded thinly the noisy squalor of the Yards.

Blair, looking at them, said, under his breath, in pure delight, "Yes, just like the high notes. A flight of violin notes!"

"Blair!" came the impatient voice; "what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"I was just going to tell you that a high silicon pig--"

"My dear mother," he interrupted wearily, "there is something else in the world than pig. I saw three b.u.t.terflies--"

"b.u.t.terflies!"

She stood in the cinder pathway in absolute consternation. Was her son a fool? For a moment she was so startled that she was not even angry. "Come on," she said soberly; and they went into the Works in silence.

That evening, when he dropped into supper, she watched him closely, and by and by her face lightened a little. Of course, to stop and gape up into the air was silly; but certainly he was talking intelligently enough now,--though it was only to Elizabeth Ferguson, who happened to be taking supper with them.

Yes, he did not look like a fool. "He _has_ brains," she said to herself, frowning, "but why doesn't he use 'em?" She sighed, and called out loudly, "Harris! Corn-beef!" But as she hacked off a slab of boiled meat, she wondered why on earth Nannie asked Elizabeth to tea so often, and especially why she asked her on those evenings when Blair happened to be at home.

"Elizabeth is such a little blatherskite," she reflected, good- naturedly, "the boy doesn't get a chance to talk to me!" Then it occurred to her that perhaps he came because Elizabeth came? for it was evident that she amused him. Well, Sarah Maitland had no objection. To secure her son for her dingy supper table she was willing to put up with Elizabeth or any other girl. But certainly Nannie invited her very often. "I'll come in to-night, if you'll invite Elizabeth," Blair would bribe her. And Nannie, like Mrs.

Maitland herself, would have invited anybody to gain an hour of her brother's company.

Those four weeks had committed Blair Maitland to his first real pa.s.sion. He was violently in love, and now he acknowledged it.

The moment had come when his denials became absurd, even to himself, so he no longer said he did not love her; he merely said he would never let her know he loved her. "If she doesn't know it, I am square with David," he argued. Curiously enough, when he said "David," he always thought of David's mother. He was profoundly unhappy, and yet exhilarated--there is always exhilaration in the aching melancholy of hopeless love; but somewhere, back in his mind, there was probably the habit of hope. He had always had everything he wanted, so why should not fate be kind now?--of course without any questionable step on his part. "I will never tell her," he a.s.sured himself; the words stabbed him, but he meant them. He only wished, irrationally enough, that Mrs. Richie might know how agonizingly honorable he was.

Elizabeth herself did not know it; she had not the slightest idea that he was in love with her. There were probably two reasons for an unconsciousness which was certainly rather unusual, for a woman almost always knows. Some tentacles of the soul seem brushed by the brutalities of the material fact, and she knows and retreats--or advances. Elizabeth did not know, and so did not retreat. Perhaps one reason for her naive stupidity was the commonplaceness of her relations with Blair. She had known him all her life, and except for that one childish playing at love, which, if she ever remembered it, seemed to her entirely funny, she had never thought of him in any other way than as "Nannie's brother"; and Nannie was, for all practical purposes, her sister.

Another reason was her entire absorption in her own love-affair.

Ever since she had learned of the little legacy, the ardent thought had lurked in her mind that it might, somehow, in spite of David's absurd theories about shoestrings, hasten her marriage. "With all this money, why on earth should we wait?" she fretted to Nannie.

"My dear! you couldn't live on the interest of it!"

"I don't know why not," Elizabeth said, wilfully.

"Goose!" Nannie said, much amused. "No; the only thing you could do would be to live on your princ.i.p.al. Why don't you do that?"

Elizabeth looked suddenly thoughtful. When she went home she repeated Nannie's careless words to Miss White, who nibbled doubtfully, and said she never heard of such a thing. But after that, for days, they talked of household economies, and with Cherry-pie's help Elizabeth managed to pare down those estimates which had so diverted her uncle and Mrs. Richie. With such practical preoccupations no wonder she was unconscious of the change in Blair. Suddenly, like a stone flung through the darkness at a comfortably lighted domestic window, she saw, with a crash of fright, a new and unknown Blair, a man who was a complete and dreadful stranger.