The Iron Woman Part 50

Elizabeth did not speak, but the look in her eyes was a demand.

"It's going to be rather tough for us, to wait until she hands it over to me," Blair said.

"To _you_?"

The moment had come! He came and knelt beside her, and kissed her; she did not repulse him. She continued to look at him steadily. Then very gently, she said, "And when Nannie gives it to you, what will you do with it?"

Blair drew in his breath as if bracing himself for a struggle.

Then he got on his feet, pulled up one of the big, plush-covered arm-chairs, took out his cigarette-case, and struck a match. His hand shook. "Do with it? Why, invest it. I am going into business, Elizabeth. I decided to this morning. If you would care to know why I have given up the idea of contesting the will, I'll tell you. I don't want to bore you," he ended, wistfully.

Apparently she did not hear him.

"Did Nannie tell you that that money was meant for a hospital?"

Blair sat up straight, and the match, burning slowly, scorched his fingers. He threw it down with an exclamation; his face was red with his effort to speak quietly. "She told me of your uncle's misunderstanding of the situation. There is no possible doubt that my mother meant the money for me. If I thought otherwise--"

"If you will talk to Uncle Robert, you will think otherwise."

"Of course I'll go and see Mr. Ferguson; I shall have to, to arrange about the transfer of the money to the estate, so that it can come back to me through the legitimate channel of a gift from Nannie; in other words, she will carry out my mother's purpose legally, instead--poor old Nannie! of carrying it out criminally, as she tried to do. But I won't go to your uncle to discuss my mother's purpose, Elizabeth. I am perfectly satisfied that she meant to give me that money."

She was silent.

"Of course," he went on, "I will hear what Mr. Ferguson has to say about this idea of his--and yours, too, apparently," he ended, bitterly.

"Yes," she said, "and mine." The words seemed to tingle as she spoke them.

"Oh, Elizabeth!" he cried, "aren't you ever going to care for me?

You actually think me capable of keeping money intended for--some one else!"

His indignation was too honest to be ignored. "I suppose that you believe it is yours," she said with an effort; "but you believe it because you don't know the facts. When you see Uncle Robert, you will not believe it." And with that meager acknowledgment of his honesty he had to be content.

They did not speak of it again during that long dull Sunday afternoon, but each knew that the other thought of nothing else.

The red September sun was sinking into a smoky haze on the other side of the river, when Blair suddenly took up his hat and went out. It had occurred to him that if he could correct Robert Ferguson's misapprehension, Elizabeth would correct hers. He would not wait for business hours to clear himself in her eyes; he would go and see her uncle at once. It was dusk when he pushed into Mr. Ferguson's library, almost in advance of the servant who announced him: "Mr. Ferguson!" he said peremptorily; "Nannie has told me. And Elizabeth gave me your message. I have come to say that the transfer shall be made at once. My one wish is that Nannie's name may not be connected with it in any possible way-- of course she is as innocent as a child."

"It can be arranged easily enough," the older man said; he did not rise from his desk, or offer his hand.

"But," Blair burst out, "what I came especially to say was that I hear you are under the impression that my mother did not, at the end, mean me to have that money?"

"I am under that impression. But," Robert Ferguson added, contemptuously, "you need not be too upset. Nannie will give it back to you."

"I am not in the least upset!" Blair retorted; "but whether I'm upset or not, is not the question. The question is, did my mother change her mind about her will, and try to make up for it in this way? I believe, from all that I know now, that she did. But I have come to ask you whether there is anything that I don't know; anything Nannie hasn't told me, or that she doesn't understand, which leads you to feel as you do?"

"You had better sit down."

"If it was just Nannie's idea, I will break the will!"

"You had better sit down," Mr. Ferguson repeated, coldly, "and I'll tell you the whole business."

Blair sat down; his hat, which he had forgotten to take off, was on the back of his head; he leaned forward, his fingers white on a cane swinging between his knees; he did not look at Elizabeth's uncle, but his eyes showed that he did not lose a word he said.

At the end of the statement--brief, fair, spoken without pa.s.sion or apparent prejudice--the tension relaxed and his face cleared; he drew a great breath of relief.

"It seems to me," Robert Ferguson ended, "that there can be no doubt of your mother's intention."

"I agree with you," Blair said, triumphantly, "there is no possible doubt! She called for the certificate and wrote my name on it. What more do you want than that to prove her intention?"

"You have a right to your opinion," Mr. Ferguson said, "and I have a right to mine. I cannot see that either opinion affects the situation. You will, as a matter of common honesty, return this money to the estate. What Nannie will ultimately do with it, is not my affair. It is between you and her. I can't see that we need discuss the matter further." He took up his pen with a gesture of dismissal.

Blair's face reddened as if it had been slapped, but he did not rise. "I want you to know, sir, that while my sister's act is, of course, entirely indefensible, and I shall immediately return the money which she tried to secure for me, I shall, nevertheless, allow her to give it back to me, because it is my conviction that, by my dying mother's wish, it belongs to me; not to--to any one else."

"Your convictions have always served your wishes. I will bid you good-evening." For an instant Blair hesitated; then, still scarlet with anger, took his departure. Mr. Ferguson's belief that he was capable of keeping money intended for--for any one else, was an insult; "an abominable insult!" he told himself. And it was Elizabeth's belief, too! He drew in his breath in a groan.

"She thinks I am dishonorable," he said. Well, certainly that sneak, Richie, would feel he was avenged if he could know how cruel she was; "d.a.m.n him," Blair said, softly.

He thought to himself that he could not go back and tell Elizabeth what her uncle had said; he could not repeat the insult! Some time, when he was calmer, he would tell her quietly that he had been wronged, that she herself had wronged him. But just now he could not talk to her; he was too angry and too miserable.

So, walking slowly in the foggy dusk that was pungent with the smoke of bonfires on the flats, he suddenly wheeled about and went in the other direction. "I'll go and have supper with Nannie," he thought; "I'm afraid she is dreadfully worried and unhappy,--and all on my account, dear old Nancy!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

"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 seash.o.r.e 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 suns.h.i.+ne on the scarcely perceptible waves; sometimes he lifted his marine gla.s.ses 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."