"But you are generally so reasonable," he protested, astonished and wistful; "why, it seems to me that youmustbe willing—after a while? Here we are, two people getting along in years, and our children have made a match of it; and we are used to each other, that's a very important thing in marriage. It's just plain common sense, after David is on his own legs in the hospital, for us to join forces. Perhaps in the early summer? I won't be unreasonably urgent. Surely"—he was gaining confidence from his own words—"surely you must see how sensible—"
Involuntarily, perhaps through sheer nervousness, she laughed. "Mrs. Maitland's 'sensible arrangement'? No, Mr. Ferguson; please let us forget all about this—"
He gave his snort of a laugh. "Forget? Nowthatisn't sensible. No, you dear, foolish woman; whatever else we do, we shall neither of us forget this. This is one of the things a man and woman don't forget;" in his earnestness he pushed aside the bowl of violets on the table between them, and caught her hand in both of his. "I'm going to get you yet," he said, he was as eager as a boy.
Before she could reply, or even draw back, David opened the parlor door, and stood aghast on the threshold. It was impossible to mistake the situation. The moment of sharp withdrawal between the two on either side of the table announced it, without the uttering of a word; David caught his breath. Robert Ferguson could have wrung the intruder's neck, but Mrs. Richie clutched at her son's presence with a gasp of relief: "Oh—David! I thought you were next door!"
"I was," David said, briefly; "I came in to get a book for Elizabeth."
"We were—talking," Mrs. Richie said, trying to laugh. Mr. Ferguson, standing with his back to the fire, was slowly putting on his glasses. "But we had finished our discussion," she ended breathlessly.
"For the moment," Mr. Ferguson said, significantly; and set his jaw.
"Well, David, have you and Elizabeth decided when she is to come and see us in Philadelphia?" Mrs. Richie asked, her voice still trembling.
"She says she'll come East whenever Mr. Ferguson can bring her," David said, rummaging among the books on the table. "But it's a pity to wait as long as that," he added, and the hint in his words was inescapable.
Robert Ferguson did not take hints. "I think I can manage to come pretty soon," he retorted.
When Mr. Ferguson said good night, David, apparently unable to find the book he had promised to take in to Elizabeth, made no effort to help his mother in her usual small nightly tasks of blowing out the lamps, tidying the table, folding up a newspaper or two. This was not like David, but Mrs. Richie was too absorbed to notice her son's absorption. Just as she was starting up-stairs, he burst out: "Materna—"
"Yes? What is it?"
He gave her a keenly searching look; then drew a breath of relief, and kissed her. "Nothing," he said.
But later, as he lay on his back in bed, his hands clasped behind his head, his pipe between his teeth, David was distinctly angry. "Of course she doesn't care a hang for him," he reflected; "I could see that; but I swear I'll go to Philadelphia right off." Before he slept he had made up his mind that was the best thing to do. That old man, gray and granite-faced, and silent, "that old codger," said the disrespectful cub of twenty-six, "should take advantage of friendship to be a nuisance,—confound him!" said David. "The idea of his daring to make love to her! I wanted to show him the door." As for his mother, even if she didn't "care a hang," he was half shocked, half hurt; he felt, as all young creatures do, a curious repulsion at the idea of love-making between people no longer young. It hurt his delicacy, it almost hurt his sense of reverence for his mother, to think that she had been obliged to listen to any words of love. "It's offensive," he said angrily; "yes; we'll clear out! We'll go to Philadelphia the first of March, instead of April."
The next morning he suggested his plan to his mother. "Could you pack up in three weeks, Materna?" he said; "I think I'd like to get you settled before I go to the hospital." Mrs. Richie's instant acceptance of the change of date made him more annoyed than ever. "He has worried her!" he thought angrily; "I wonder how long this thing has been going on?" But he said nothing to her. Nor did he mean to explain to Elizabeth just why he must shorten their last few weeks of being together. It would not be fair to his mother to explain, he said to himself;—he did not think of any unfairness to the "old codger." He was, however, a little uneasy at the prospect of breaking the fact of this earlier departure to Elizabeth without an explanation. Elizabeth might be hurt; she might say that he didn't want to stay with her. "She knows better!" he said to himself, grinning. The honest truth was, and he faced it with placidity, that if things were not explained to Elizabeth, she might get huffy,—this was David's word; but David knew how to check that "huffiness"!
They were to walk together that afternoon, and he manoeuvered for a few exquisite minutes alone before they went out. At first the moments were not very exquisite.
"Well! What happened to you last night? I thought you were going to bring me that book!"
"I couldn't. I had to stay at home."
"Why?"
"Well; Materna wanted me."
Elizabeth murmured a small, cold "Oh." Then she said, "Why didn't you send the book in by Uncle?"
"I didn't think of it," David said candidly.
Elizabeth's dimple straightened. "It would have been polite to have sent me a message."
"I took it for granted you'd know I was detained."
"You take too much for—" she began, but before she could utter the sharp words that trembled on her lips, he caught her in his arms and kissed her; instantly the little flame of temper was blown out.
"That's the worst of walking," David said, as she let him draw her down on the sofa beside him; "I can't kiss you on the street."
"Heavens, I should hope not!" she said. Then, forgetting what she thought was his forgetfulness, she relaxed within his arms, sighing with bliss. "'Oh, isn't it joyful,—joyful,—joyful—'" she hummed softly. "I do love to have you put your arms around me, David! Isn't it wonderful to love each other the way we do? I feel so sorry for other girls, because they aren't engaged to you; poor things! Do you suppose anybody in the world was ever as happy as I am?"
"You?" said David, scornfully; "you don't count at all, compared to me!" Then they both laughed for the sheer foolishness of that "joyfulness," which was so often on Elizabeth's lips. But David sighed. "Three years is a devilish long time to wait."
"Maybe it will be only two!" she whispered, her soft lips against his ear. But this was one of David's practical and responsible moments, so he said grimly, "Not much hope of that."
Elizabeth, agreeing sadly, got up to straighten her hat before the mirror over the mantelpiece. "It's hideously long. Oh, if I were only a rich girl!"
"Thank Heaven you are not!" he said, with such sudden cold incisiveness that she turned round and looked at him. "Do you think I'd marry a rich woman, and let her support me?"
"I don't see why she shouldn't, if she loved you," Elizabeth said calmly; "I don't see that it matters which has the money, the man or the girl."
"I see," David said; "I've always felt that way—even about mother. Materna has wanted to help me out lots of times, and I wouldn't let her. I could kick myself now when I think how often I have to put my hand in her pocket."
"I think," cried Elizabeth, "a man might love a girl enough to live on her money!"
"I don't," David said, soberly.
"Well," said Elizabeth, "don't worry. I haven't a cent, so you can't put your hand in my pocket! Come, we must start. I want to go and see Nannie for a minute, and Cherry-pie says I must be in before dark, because I have a cold."
"I like sitting here best," David confessed, but pulled himself up from the sofa, and in another minute Miss White, peering from an upper window, saw them walking off. "Made for each other!" said Cherry-pie, nibbling with happiness.
They had almost reached Nannie's before David said that—that he was afraid he would have to go away a month before he had planned. When he was most in earnest, his usual brevity of speech fell into a curtness that might have seemed, to one who did not know him, indifference. Elizabeth did know him, but even to her the ensuing explanation, which did not explain, was, through his very anxiety not to offend her, provokingly laconic.
"But you don't go on duty at the hospital until April," she said hotly."Why do you leave Mercer the first of March?"
"Materna wants time to get settled."
"Mrs. Richie told me only yesterday that she was going to a hotel," Elizabeth said; "she said she wasn't going to look for a house until the fall, because she will be at the seashore this summer. It certainly doesn't take a month to find a hotel."
"Well, the fact is, there are reasons why it isn't pleasant for Materna to be in Mercer just now."
"Not pleasant to be in Mercer! What on earth do you mean?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. It's her affair."
"Oh, I didn't mean to intrude," Elizabeth said coldly.
"Now, Elizabeth," he protested, "that isn't a nice thing to say."
"Do you thinkyou'vebeen saying nice things? I am perfectly certain that you would never hesitate to tell your mother any of my reasons for doing things!"
"Elizabeth, I wouldn't leave Mercer a minute before the first of April, if I wasn't sure it was best for Materna. You know that."
"Oh, go!" she said; "go, and have all the secrets you want.Idon't care."
"Elizabeth, be reasonable; I—"
But she had left him; they had reached the Maitland house, and, pushing aside his outstretched hand, she opened the iron gate herself, slammed it viciously, and ran up the curving steps to the door. As she waited for Harris to answer her ring, she looked back: "I think you are reasonable enough for both of us; please don't let me ever interfere with your plans!" She paused a minute in the hall, listening for a following step;—it did not come. "Well, if he's cross he can stay outside!" she told herself, and burst into the parlor. "Nannie!" she began,—"Oh, I beg your pardon!" she said. Blair was standing on the hearth-rug, talking vehemently to his sister; at the sound of the opening door he wheeled around and saw her, glowing, wounded, and amazingly handsome. "Elizabeth!" he said, staring at her. And he kept on staring while they shook hands. They were a handsome pair, the tall, dark, well-set-up man, and the girl almost as tall as he, with brown, gilt-flecked hair blowing about a vivid face which had the color, in the sharp February afternoon, of a blush-rose.
"Where's David?" Nannie said.
[Illustration: 'I THINK YOU ARE REASONABLE ENOUGH FOR BOTH OF US']
"I left him at the gate. He's coming in in a minute," Elizabeth said; and turned to Blair: "I didn't know you had come home."
Blair explained that he was only in Mercer for a day. "I'm in a hole," he said drolly, "and I've come home to have Nannie get me out."
"Nannie is always ready to get people out of holes;" Elizabeth said, but her voice was vague. She was listening for David's step, her cheeks beginning to burn with mortification, at his delay.
"WhereisDavid?" Nannie demanded, returning from a fruitless search for him in the hall.
"He's a lucky dog," Blair said, looking at the charming, angry face with open and friendly admiration.
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know about his luck. By the way, he is going to Philadelphia the first of March, Nannie," she said carelessly.
"I thought he didn't have to go until April?" Nannie sympathized.
"So did I. Perhaps he'll tell you why he has changed his mind. He hasn't deigned to give me his reasons yet."
And Blair, watching her, said to himself, "Same old Elizabeth!" He began to talk to her in his gay, teasing way, but she was not listening; suddenly she interrupted him, saying that she must go home. "I thought David was coming in, but I suppose he's walking up and down, waiting for me."
"If he doesn't know which side his bread is buttered, I'll walk home with you," Blair said; "and Nancy dear, while I'm gone, you see Mother and do your best, won't you?"
"Yes," poor Nannie sighed, "but I do wish—"
Blair did not wait to hear what she wished; he had eyes only for this self-absorbed young creature who would not listen when he spoke to her. At the gate she hesitated, looked hurriedly about her, up and down the squalid street; she did not answer, did not apparently hear, some question that he asked. Blair glanced up and down the street, too. "David doesn't appreciate his opportunities," he said.
Elizabeth's lip tightened, and she flung up her head; the rose in her cheeks was drowned in scarlet. She came out of her absorption, and began to sparkle at her companion; she teased him, but not too much; she flattered him, very delicately; she fell into half-sentimental reminiscences that made him laugh, then stabbed him gently with an indifferent word that showed how entirely she had forgotten him. And all the time her eyes were absent, and the straight line in her cheek held the dimple a prisoner. Blair, who had begun with a sort of good-natured, rather condescending amusement at his old playmate, found himself, to his surprise, on his mettle.
"Don't go home yet," he said; "let's take a walk."
"I'd love to!"
"Mercer seems to be just as hideous as ever," Blair said; "suppose we go across the river, and get away from it?"
She agreed lightly: "Horrid place." At the corner, she flashed a glance down the side street; David was not to be seen.
"Will David practise here, when he is ready to put out his shingle?"
"I'm sure I don't know. I can't keep track of David's plans."
"He is just as good as ever, I suppose?" Blair said, and watched her delicate lip droop.
"Better, if anything." And in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh. The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live up to David," she said.
Blair, with a laugh, confessed that he had long ago given up any such ambition himself. On the bridge they stopped, and Blair looked back at the town lying close to the water. In the evening dusk lights were pricking out all along the shore; the waste-lands beyond the furnaces were vague with night mists, faintly amethyst in the east, bronze and black over the city. Here and there in the brown distances flames would suddenly burst out from unseen stacks, then sink, and the shadows close again.
"I wish I could paint it," Blair said dreamily; "Mercer from the bridge, at twilight, is really beautiful."
"I like the bridge," Elizabeth said, "for sentimental reasons. (Now," she added to herself, "now, I am a bad woman; to speak ofthatto another man is vile.) David and I," she said, significantly,—and laughed.
Even Blair was startled at the crudeness of the allusion. "I didn't suppose David ever condescended to be spoony," he said, and at the same instant, to his absolute amazement, she caught his arm and pulled his hand from the railing.
"Don't touch that place!" she cried; Blair, amused and cynical, laughed under his breath.
"I see; this is the hallowed spot where you made our friend a happy man?"
"We'll turn back now, please," Elizabeth said, suddenly trembling. She had reached the climax of her anger, and the reaction was like the shock of dropping from a dizzy height. During the walk home she scarcely spoke. When he left her at her uncle's door, she was almost rude. "Goodnight. No; I'm busy. I'd rather you didn't come in." In her own room, without waiting to take off her things, she ran to her desk; she did not even pause to sit down, but bent over, and wrote, sobbing under her breath:
"DAVID: I am just as false as I can be. I ridiculed you to Blair. I lied and lied and lied—because I was angry. I hated you for a little while. I am low, and vulgar, and a blasphemer.I told him about the bridge.You see how vile I am? But don't—don't give me up, David. Only—understand just how base I am, and then, if you possibly can, keep on loving me. E.
"P. S. I am not worth loving."
* * * * *
When David read that poor little letter, his face quivered for an instant, then he smiled. "Materna," he said—they were sitting at supper; "Materna, she certainly is perfect!"
His mother laughed, and put out her hand. But he shook his head. "Not even you!" he said.
When he went to see Elizabeth that evening, he found her curiously broken. "David, how could I do it? I madefunof you! Do you understand? Yes; I truly did. Oh, how vile I am! And I knew I was vile all the time; that's the queer part of it. But I piled it on! And all the time it seemed as if I was just bleeding to death inside. But I kept on doing it. I loved being false. I loved to blacken myself." She drew away from him, shivering. "No; don't touch me; don't kiss me; I am not worthy. Oh, David, throw me over! Don't marry me, I am not fit—" And as he caught her in his arms, she said, her voice smothered against his breast, "You see, you didn't come in at Nannie's. And it looked as if—as if you didn't care. It was humiliating, David. And last night you didn't bring me the book, or even send any message; and that was sort of careless. Yes, I really think you were a little horrid, David. So I was hurt, I suppose, to start with; and you know, when I am hurt—Oh, yes; it was silly; but—"
He kissed her again, and laughed. "It was silly, dear."
"Well, but listen: I am not excusing myself for this afternoon, but I do want you to understand how it started. I was provoked at your not explaining to me why you go away a whole month earlier than you need; I think any girl would be a little provoked, David. And then, on top of it, you let Blair and Nannie see that you didn't care to walk home with me, and—"
"But good gracious!" said David, amused and tender, "I thought you didn't want me! And it would have been rather absurd to hang round, if I wasn't wanted."
"Oh," she cried, sharply, lifting her wet face from his breast, "don't you see?I want you to be absurd!Can't you understand how a girl feels?" She stopped, and sighed. "After all, why should you show Nannie and Blair that you care? Why should you wait? I am not worth caring for, or waiting for, anywhere, any time! Oh, David, my temper—my dreadful temper!"
He lifted her trembling hand and kissed the scar on her left wrist silently.
"I ought not to see you to-night, just to punish myself," she said brokenly. "You don't know how crazy I was when I was talking to Blair. I wascrazy!Oh, why, when I was a child, didn't they make me control my temper? I suppose I'm like—my mother," she ended in a whisper. "And I can't change, now; I'm too old."
David smiled. "You are terribly old," he said. Like everybody else, save Mrs. Richie, David accepted Elizabeth's temper as a matter of course. "She doesn't mean anything by it," her little world had always said; and put up with the inconvenience of her furies, with the patience of people who were themselves incapable of the irrationalities of temper. "Oh, you are a hardened sinner," David mocked.
"You do forgive me?" she whispered.
At that he was grave. "There is nothing I wouldn't forgive, Elizabeth."
"But I have stabbed you?"
"Yes; a little; but I am yours to stab."
Her eyes filled. "Oh, it is so wonderful, that you go on loving me,David!"
"You go on loving me," he rallied her; "in spite of my dullness and slowness, and all that."
But Elizabeth was not listening. "Sometimes it frightens me to get so angry," she said, with a somber look. "It was just the same when I was a little girl; do you remember the time I cut off my hair? I think you had hurt my feelings; I forget now what you had done. I was always having my feelings hurt! Of course I was awfully silly. It was a relief then to spoil my body, by cutting off my hair. This afternoon it was a relief to put mud on my soul."
He looked at her, trying to find words tender enough to heal the wounds she had torn in her own heart; not finding them, he was silent.
"Oh, we must face it," she said; "youmust face it. I am not a good girl; I am not the kind of girl you ought to marry, I'm perfectly sure your mother thinks so. She thinks a person with a temper can't love people."
"I'll not go away in March!" David interrupted her passionately;—of course it might be pleasanter for Materna to get away from old Ferguson; but what is a man's mother, compared with his girl! Elizabeth's pain was intolerable to him. "I won't leave you a day before I have to!"
For a moment her wet eyes smiled. "Indeed you shall; I may be wicked—oh, I am! but I am not really an idiot. Only, David,don'ttake things so for granted, dear; and don't be so awfully sensible, David."
When the door closed behind Blair and Elizabeth, Nannie set out to do that "best," which her brother had demanded of her. She went at once into the dining-room; but before she could speak, her stepmother called out to her:
"Here! Nannie! You are just the person I want—Watson's late again, andI'm in a hurry. Just take these letters and sign them 'S. Maitland perN. M.' They must be posted before five. Sit down there at the table."
Nannie could not sign letters and talk at the same time. She got pen and ink and began to write her stepmother's name, over and over, slowly, like a little careful machine: "S. Maitland," "S. Maitland." In her desire to please she discarded her own neat script, and reproduced with surprising exactness the rough signature which she knew so well. But all the while her anxious thoughts were with her brother. She wished he had not rushed off with Elizabeth. If he had only come himself into the detested dining-room, his mother would have bidden him sign the letters; he might have read them and talked them over with her, and that would have pleased her. Nannie herself had no ambition to read them; her eye caught occasional phrases: "Shears for—," "new converter," etc., etc. The words meant nothing to Nannie, bending her blond head and writing like a machine, "S. Maitland," "S. Maitland," …
"Mamma," she began, dipping her pen into the ink, "Blair has bought a rather expensive—"
Mrs. Maitland came over to the table and picked up the letters. "That's all. Now clear out, clear out! I've got a lot to do!" Then her eye fell on one of the signatures, and she gave her grunt of a laugh. "If you hadn't put 'Per N. M.,' I shouldn't have known that I hadn't signed 'em myself … Nannie."
"Yes, Mamma?"
"Is Blair going to be at home to supper?"
"I think not. But he said he would be in this evening. And he wanted me to—to ask—"
"Well, perhaps I'll come over to your parlor to see him, if I get through with my work. I believe he goes East again to-morrow?"
"Yes," Nannie said. Mrs. Maitland, at her desk, had begun to write. Nannie wavered for a minute, then, with a despairing look at the back of her stepmother's head, slipped away to her own part of the house. "I'll tell her at supper," she promised herself. But in her own room, as she dressed for tea, panic fell upon her. She began to walk nervously about; once she stopped, and leaning her forehead against the window, looked absently into the dusk. At the end of the cinder path, the vast pile of the foundry rose black against the fading sky; on the left the open arches of the cast-house of the furnace glowed with molten iron that was running into pigs on the wide stretch of sand. The spur track was banked with desolate wastes of slag and rubbish; beyond them, like an enfolding arm, was the river, dark in the darkening twilight. From under half-shut dampers flat sheets of sapphire and orange flame roared out in rhythmical pulsations, and above them was the pillar of smoke shot through with flying billions of sparks; back of this monstrous and ordered confusion was the solemn circling line of hills. It was all hideous and fierce, yet in the clear winter dusk it had a beauty of its own that held Nannie Maitland, even though she was too accustomed to it to be conscious of its details. As she stared out at it with troubled eyes, there was a knock at her door; before she could say "Come in," her stepmother entered.
"Here!" Mrs. Maitland said, "just fix this waist, will you? I can't seem to—to make it look right." There was a dull flush on her cheek, and she spoke in cross confusion. "Haven't you got a piece of lace, or something; I don't care what. This black dress seems—" she broke off and glanced into the mirror; she was embarrassed, but doggedly determined. "Make me look—somehow," she said.
Nannie, assenting, and rummaging in her bureau drawer, had a flash of understanding. "She's dressing up for Blair!" She took out a piece of lace, and laid it about the gaunt shoulders; then tucked the front of the dress in, and brought the lace down on each side. The soft old thread seemed as inappropriate as it would have been if laid on a scarcely cooled steel "bloom."
"Well, pin it, can't you?" Mrs. Maitland said sharply; "haven't you got some kind of a brooch?" Nannie silently produced a little amethyst pin.
"It doesn't just suit the dress, I'm afraid," she ventured.
But Mrs. Maitland looked in the glass complacently. "Nonsense!" she said, and tramped out of the room. In the hall she threw back,"—bliged."
"Oh,poorMamma!" Nannie said. Her sympathy was hardly more than a sense of relief; if her mother was dressing up for Blair, she must be more than usually good-natured. "I'll tell her at supper," Nannie decided, with a lift of courage.
But at supper, in the disorderly dining-room, with the farther end of the table piled with ledgers, Mrs. Maitland was more unapproachable than ever. When Nannie asked a timid question about the evening, she either did not hear, or she affected not to. At any rate, she vouchsafed no answer. Her face was still red, and she seemed to hide behind her evening paper. To Nannie's gentle dullness this was no betrayal; it merely meant that Mrs. Maitland was cross again, and her heart sank within her. But somehow she gathered up her courage:
"You won't forget to come into the parlor, Mamma? Blair wants to talk to you about something that—that—"
"I've got some writing to do. If I get through I'll come. Now clear out, clear out; I'm too busy to chatter."
Nannie cleared out. She had no choice. She went over to her vast, melancholy parlor, into which it seemed as if the fog had penetrated, to await Blair. In her restless apprehension she sat down at the piano, but after the first bar or two her hands dropped idly on the keys. Then she got up and looked aimlessly about. "I'd better finish that landscape," she said, and went over to her drawing-board. She stood there for a minute, fingering a lead pencil; her nerves were tense, and yet, as she reminded herself, it was foolish to be frightened. His mother loved Blair; she would do anything in the world for him—Nannie thought of the lace; yes, anything! Blair was only a little extravagant. And what did his extravagance matter? his mother was so very rich! But oh, why did they always clash so? Then she heard the sound of Blair's key in the lock.
"Well, Nancy!" he said gaily, "she's a charmer."
"Who?" said Nannie, bewildered; "Oh, you mean Elizabeth?"
"Yes; but there's a lot of gunpowder lying round loose, isn't there? She was out with David, I suppose because he didn't show up. In fact, she was so mad she was perfectly stunning. Nancy! I think I'll stick it out here for two or three days; Elizabeth is mighty good fun, and David is in town; we might renew our youth, we four; what do you say? Well!" he ended, coming back to his own affairs, "what did mother say?"
"Oh, Blair, I couldn't!"
"What! you haven't told her?"
"Blair dear, I did my best; but she simply never gave me a chance. Indeed, I tried, but I couldn't. She wouldn't let me open my lips in the afternoon, and at supper she read the paper every minute—Harris will tell you."
Blair Maitland whistled. "Well, I'll tell her myself. It was really to spare her that I wanted you to do it. I always rile her, somehow, poor dear mother. Nannie, this house reeks of cabbage! Does she live on it?" Blair threw up his arms with a wordless gesture of disgust.
"I'm so sorry," Nannie said; "but don't tell her you don't like it."
The door across the hall opened, and there was a heavy step. The brother and sister looked at each other.
"Blair,be nice!" Nannie entreated; her soft eyes under the meekly parted blond hair were very anxious.
He did not need the caution; whenever he was with his mother, the mere instinct of self-preservation made him anxious to "be nice." As Mrs. Maitland had her instinct of self-preservation, too, there had been, in the last year, very few quarrels. Instead there was, on his part, an exaggerated politeness, and on her part, a pathetic effort to be agreeable. The result was, of course, entire absence of spontaneity in both of them.
Mrs. Maitland, her knitting in her hands, came tramping into the parlor; the piece of thread lace was pushed awry, but there had been further preparation for the occasion: at first her son and daughter did not know what the change was; then suddenly both recognized it, and exchanged an astonished glance.
"Mother!" cried Blair incredulously, "earrings!"
The dull color on the high cheek-bones deepened; she smiled sheepishly. "Yes; I saw 'em in my bureau drawer, and put 'em on. Haven't worn 'em for years; but Blair, here, likes pretty things." (Her son, under his breath, groaned: "pretty!") "So you are off tomorrow, Blair?" she said, politely; she ran her hand along the yellowing bone needles, and the big ball of pink worsted rolled softly down on to the floor. As she glanced at him over her steel-rimmed spectacles, her eyes softened as an eagle's might when looking at her young. "I wish his father could see him," she thought. "Next time you come home," she said, "it will be to go to work!"
"Yes," Blair said, smiling industriously.
"Pity you have to study this summer; I'd like to have you in the office now."
"Yes; I'm awfully sorry," he said with charming courtesy, "but I feel I ought to brush up on one or two subjects, and I can do it better abroad than here. I'm going to paint a little, too. I'll be very busy all summer."
"Why don't you paint our new foundry?" said Mrs. Maitland. She laughed with successful cheerfulness; Blair liked jokes, and this, she thought, complacently, was a joke. "Well,Ishall manage to keep busy, too!" she said.
"I suppose so," Blair agreed.
He was lounging on the arm of Nannie's chair, and felt his sleeve plucked softly. "Now," said Nannie.
But Blair was not ready. "You are always busy," he said; "I wish I had your habit of industry."
Mrs. Maitland's smile faded. "I wish you had."
"Oh, well, you've got industry enough for this family," Blair declared.But the flattery did not penetrate.
"Too much, maybe," she said grimly; then remembered, and began to "entertain" again: "I had a compliment to-day."
Blair, with ardent interest, said, "Really?"
"That man Dolliver in our office—you remember Dolliver?" Blair nodded. "He happened to say he never knew such an honest man as old Henry B. Knight. Remember old Mr. Knight?" She paused, her eyes narrowed into a laugh. "He married Molly Wharton. I always called her 'goose Molly.' She used to make eyes at your father; but she couldn't get him—though she tried to hard enough, by telling him, so I heard, that the 'only feminine thing about me was my petticoats.' A very coarse remark, in my judgment; and as for being feminine,—when you were born, I thought of inviting her to come and look at you so she could see what a baby was like! She never had any children. Well, old Knight was elder of the Second Church. Remember?"
"Oh yes," Blair said vaguely.
"Dolliver said Knight once lost a trade by telling the truth, 'when he might have kept his mouth shut'—that was Dolliver's way of putting it. 'Well,' I said, 'I hope you think that our Works are just as honestly conducted as the Knight Mills'; fact was, I knew a thing or two about Henry B. And what do you suppose Dolliver said? 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'you are honest, Mrs. Maitland, but you ain't damn-fool honest.'" She laughed loudly, and her son laughed too, this time in genuine amusement; but Nannie looked prim, at which Mrs. Maitland glanced at Blair, and there was a sympathetic twinkle between them which for the moment put them both really at ease. "I got on to a good thing last week," she said, still trying to amuse him, but now there was reality in her voice.
"Do tell me about it," Blair said, politely.
"You know Kraas? He is the man that's had a bee in his bonnet for the last ten years about a newfangled idea for making castings of steel. He brought me his plans once, but I told him they were no good. But last month he asked me to make some castings for him to go on his contrivance. Of course I did; we cast anything for anybody—provided they can pay for it. Well, Kraas tried it in our foundry; no good, just as I said; the metal was full of flaws. But it occurred to me to experiment with his idea on my own hook. I melted my pig, and poured it into his converter thing; but I added some silvery pig I had on the Yard, made when No. 1 blew in, and the castings were as sound as a nut! Kraas never thought of that." She twitched her pink worsted and gave her grunt of a laugh. "Master Kraas hasn't any caveat, and he can't get one on that idea, so of course I can go ahead."
"Oh, Mamma, how clever you are!" Nannie murmured, admiringly.
"Clever?" said Blair; Nannie shook his arm gently, and he recollected himself. "Well, I suppose business is like love and war. All's fair in business."
Mrs. Maitland was silent. Then she said: "Business is war. But—fair?It is a perfectly legal thing to do."
"Oh, legal, yes," her son agreed significantly; the thin ice of politeness was beginning to crack. It was the old situation over again; he was repelled by unloveliness; this time it was the unloveliness of shrewdness. For a moment his disgust made him quite natural. "It islegalenough, I suppose," he said coldly.
Mrs. Maitland did not lift her head, but with her eyes fixed on her needles, she suddenly stopped knitting. Nannie quivered.
"Mamma," she burst in, "Blair wanted to tell you about something very beautiful that he has found, and—" Her brother pinched her, and her voice trailed into silence.
"Found something beautiful? I'd like to hear of his finding something useful!" The ice cracked a little more. "As for your mother's honesty, Blair, if you had waited a minute, I'd have told you that as soon as I found the idea was practical I handed it over to Kraas.I'mdamn-fool honest, I suppose." But this time she did not laugh at her joke. Blair was instant with apologies; he had not meant—he had not intended—"Of course you would do the square thing," he declared.
"But you thought I wouldn't," she said. And while he was making polite exclamations, she changed the subject for something safer. She still tried to entertain him, but now she spoke wearily. "What do you suppose I read in the paper to-night? Some man in New York—named Maitland, curiously enough; 'picked up' an old master—that's how the paper put it; for $5,000. It appears it was considered 'cheap'! It was 14x18 inches.Inches, mind you, not feet! Well, Mr. Doestick's friends are not all dead yet. Sorry anybody of our name should do such a thing."
Nannie turned white enough to faint.
"Allow me to say," said Blair, tensely, "that an 'old master' might be cheap at five times that price!"
"I wouldn't give five thousand dollars for the greatest picture that was ever painted," his mother announced. Then, without an instant's warning, her face puckered into a furious sneeze. "God bless us!" she said, and blew her nose loudly. Blair jumped.
"Iwould give all I have in the world!" he said.
"Well," his mother said, ramming her grimy handkerchief into her pocket, "if it cost allyouhave in the world, it would certainly be cheap; for, so far as I know, you haven't anything." Alas! the ice had given way entirely.
Blair pushed Nannie's hand from his arm, and getting up, walked over to the marble-topped centre-table; he stood there slowly turning over the pages ofThe Poetesses of America, in rigid determination to hold his tongue. Mrs. Maitland's eyebrow began to rise; her fingers tightened on her hurrying needles until the nails were white. Nannie, looking from one to the other, trembled with apprehension. Then she made an excuse to take Blair to the other end of the room.
"Come and look at my drawing," she said; and added under her breath:"Don't tell her!"
Blair shook his head. "I've got to, somehow." But when he came back and stood in front of his mother, his hands in his pockets, his shoulder lounging against the mantelpiece, he was apparently his careless self again. "Well," he said, gaily, "if I haven't anything of my own, it's your fault; you've been too generous to me!"
The knitting-needles flagged; Nannie drew a long breath.
"Yes, you are too good to me," he said; "and you work so hard! Why do you work like a—a man?" There was an uncontrollable quiver of disgust in his voice.
His mother smiled, with a quick bridling of her head—he was complimenting her! The soreness from his thrust about legality vanished. "Yes; I do work hard. I reckon there's no man in the iron business who can get more pork for his shilling than I can!"
Blair cast an agonized look at Nannie; then set himself to his task again—in rather a roundabout way: "Why don't you spend some of your money on yourself, Mother, instead of on me?"
"There's nothing I want."
"But there are so many things you could have!"
"I have everything I need," said Mrs. Maitland; "a roof, a bed, a chair, and food to eat. As for all this truck that people spend their money on, what use is it? that's what I want to know! What's it worth?"
Blair put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small beautifully carved jade box; he took off the lid delicately, and shook a scarab into the palm of his hand. "I'll tell you whatthatis worth," he said, holding the dull-blue oval between his thumb and finger; then he mentioned a sum that made Nannie exclaim. His mother put down her knitting, and taking the bit of eternity in her fingers, looked at it silently. "Do you wonder I got that box, which is a treasure in itself, to hold such a treasure?" Blair exulted.
Mrs. Maitland, handing the scarab back, began to knit furiously. "That's what it's worth," he said; he was holding the scarab in his palm with a sort of tenderness; his eyes caressed it. "But it isn't what I paid. The collector was hard up, and I made him knock off twenty-five per cent, of the price."
"Hah!" said Mrs. Maitland; "well; I suppose 'all's fair in love and collections'?"
"What's unfair in that?" Blair said, sharply; "I buy in the cheapest market. You dothatyourself, my dear mother." When Blair said "my dear mother," he was farthest from filial affection. "Besides," he said, with strained self-control, "besides, I'm like you, I'm not 'damn-fool honest'!"
"Oh, I didn't say you weren't honest. Only, if I was going to take advantage of anybody, I'd do it for something more important than a blue china beetle." "The trouble with you, Mother, is that you don't see anything but those hideous Works of yours!" her son burst out.
"If I did, you couldn't pay for your china beetles. Beetles? You couldn't pay for the breeches you're sitting in!"
"Oh, Mamma! oh, Blair!" sighed poor Nannie.
There was a violent silence. Suddenly Mrs. Maitland brought the flat of her hand furiously down on the table; then, without a word, got on her feet, pulled at the ball of pink worsted which had run behind a chair and caught under the caster; her jerk broke the thread. The next moment the parlor door banged behind her.
Nannie burst out crying. Blair opened and closed his lips, speechless with rage.
"What—what made her so angry?" Nannie said, catching her breath. "Was it the beetle?"
"Don't call it that ridiculous name! I'll have to borrow the $5,000. And where the devil I'll get it I don't know. Nannie, 'goose Molly' wasn't an entire fool, after all!"
"Blair!" his sister protested, horrified. But Blair was too angry to be ashamed of himself. He could not see that his mother's anger was only the other side of her love. In Sarah Maitland, not only maternity, but pride, the peculiar pride engendered in her by her immense business—pride and maternity together, demanded such high things of her son! Not finding them, the pain of disappointment broke into violent expression. Indeed, had this charming fellow, handsome, selfish, sweet-hearted, been some other woman's son, she would have been far more patient with him. Her very love made her abominable to him. She was furiously angry when she left him there in Nannie's parlor; all the same he did not have to borrow the $5,000.
The next morning Sarah Maitland sent for her superintendent. "Mr. Ferguson," she said—they were in her private office, and the door was shut; "Mr. Ferguson, I think—but I don't know—I think Blair has been making an idiot of himself again. I saw in the paper that somebody called Maitland had been throwing money away on a picture. I don't know what it was, and I don't want to know. It was 14x18 inches; not feet. That was enough for me. Why, Ferguson, those big pictures in my parlor (I bought them when I was going to be married; a woman is sort of foolish then; I wouldn't do such a thing now), those four pictures are 4x6 feet each; and they cost me $400; $100 apiece. But this New York man has paid $5,000 for one picture 14x18 inches! If it was Blair—and it came over me last night, all of a sudden, that it was; he hasn't got any $5,000 to pay for it. I don't want to go into the matter with him; we don't get along on such subjects. But I want you to ask him about it; maybe he'll speak out to you, man fashion. If this 'Maitland' is just a fool of our name so much the better; but if it is Blair, I've got to help him out, I suppose. I want you to settle the thing for me. I—can't." Her voice broke on the last word; she coughed and cleared her throat before she could speak distinctly. "I haven't the time," she said.
Robert Ferguson listened, frowning. "You'll give him money to spend in ways you don't approve of?"
She nodded sullenly. "I have to."
"You don't have to!" he broke out; "for God's sake, Mrs. Maitland,stop!"
"What do you mean, sir?"
"I mean . . . this isn't my business, but I can't see you—Mrs.Maitland, if I get to talking on this subject, we'll quarrel."
The glare of anger in her face died out. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. "I won't quarrel with you. Go on. Say what you think. I won't say I'll take your advice, but I'll listen to it."
"It's what I have always told you. You are squeezing the life out of Blair by giving him money. You've always done it, because it was the easy thing to do. Let up on him! Give him a chance. Let him earn his money, or go without. Talk about making him independent—you've made him as dependent as a baby! I don't know my Bible as well as you do, but there is a verse somewhere—something about 'fullness of bread and abundance of idleness.' That's what's the trouble with Blair. 'Fullness of bread and abundance of idleness.'"
"But he's been at college; he couldn't work while he was at college," she said, with honest bewilderment.
"Of course he couldn't. But why did you let him dawdle round at college, pretending to special, for a year after he graduated? Of course hewon'twork so long as he doesn't have to. The boy wouldn't be human if he did! You never made him feel he had to get through and to go to work. You've given him everything he wanted, and you've exacted nothing in return; not scholarship, nor even decent behavior. He's gambled, and gone after women, and bought everything on earth he wanted—the only thing he knows how to do is to spend money! He has never done a hand's turn of work in his life. He is just as much a dead beat as any beggar who gets his living out of other people's pockets. That he gets it out of your pocket doesn't alter that; that he doesn't wear rags and knock at back doors doesn't alter it. He's a dead beat! Any man is, who takes and doesn't give anything in return. It's queer you can't see that, Mrs. Maitland."
She was silent.
"Why, look here: I've heard you say, many a time, that the best part of your life was when you had to work hardest. Isn't that so?" She nodded. "Then why in thunder won't you let Blair work? Let him work, or go without!"
Again she did not speak.
"For Heaven's sake, give him a chance, before it's too late!"
Mrs. Maitland got up, and stood with her back to him, looking out of the smoke-grimed window. Presently she turned round. "Well, what would you do now—supposing he did buy the picture?"
"Tell him that he has overdrawn his allowance, and that if he wants the picture he must earn the money to pay for it. Say you'll advance it, if instead of going to Europe this summer he'll stay at home and go to work. Of course he can't earn five thousand dollars. I doubt if he can earn five thousand cents! But make up a job—just for this once; and help him out. I don't believe in made-up jobs, on principle; but they're better than nothing. If he won't work, darn the picture! It can be resold."
She blew her lips out in a bubbling sigh, and began to bite her forefinger. Robert Ferguson had said his say. He gathered his papers together and got on his feet.
"Mr. Ferguson …" He waited, his hand on the knob.
"Yes?"
"'Bliged to you. But for the present—"
"Very well," Robert Ferguson said shortly.
"Just put through the business of the picture. Hereafter—"
Ferguson shrugged his shoulders.
After his first spasm of angry disgust, when he declared he would go East the next morning, Blair's fancy for "hanging round Mercer" hardened into purpose; but he did not "hang round" his mother's house. "The hotel is pretty bad," he told Nannie, "but it's better thanthis." So he took the most expensive suite in the big, dark old River House that in those days was Mercer's best hotel. Its blackened facade and the Doric columns of its entrance gave it a certain exterior dignity; and its interior comfort, combined with the reviving associations of youth, lengthened Blair's two or three days to a week, then to a fortnight.
The day after that distressing interview with his mother, he went gaily round to Mrs. Richie's to pound David on the back, and say "Congratulations, old fellow! Why in thunder," he complained, "didn't I come back before? You've cut me out, you villain!"
David grinned.
"'Before the devil could come back,The angel had the inside track,'"
he admitted.
"Well, if you'll take my advice, you won't be too angelic," Blair said a little dryly. "She always had a touch of the other thing in her, you know."
"You think I'd better cultivate a few vices?" David inquired amiably;"I'm obliged for an example, anyhow!"
But Blair did not keep up the chaffing. The atmosphere of Mrs. Richie's house dominated him as completely as when he was a boy. He looked at her serene face, her simple, feminine parlor, the books and flowers and pictures,—and thought of his mother and his mother's house. Then, somehow, he was ashamed of his thoughts, because this dear lady said in her gentle way:
"How happy your mother must be to have you at home again, Blair. You won't rush right off and leave us, will you?"
"Well," he hesitated, "of course I don't want to"—he was surprised at the ring of truth in his voice; "but I am going to paint this summer. I am going to be in one of the studios in Paris."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said simply. And Blair had an instant of uncertainty, although a moment before his "painting" had seemed to him necessary, because it facilitated another summer away from home; and after the interview with his mother's general manager, a summer away from home was more than ever desirable.
Mr. Ferguson had handed over the five thousand dollars, and then freed his mind. Blair listened. He heard that he was a sucker, that he was a poor stick, that he wasn't fit to black his mother's boots. "They need it," he said, chuckling; and Robert Ferguson nearly burst with anger!
Yet when the check was on its way to New York, and the picture had been shipped to Mercer, Blair still lingered at the River House. The idea of "renewing their youth" had appealed to all four friends. In the next two or three weeks they were constantly together at either one house or the other, or at some outside rendezvous arranged by Blair—a drive down to Willis's, a theater party and supper, a moonlight walk. Once David suggested "ice-cream at Mrs. Todd's." But this fell through; Blair said that even his sentimentality could not face the blue paper roses, and when David urged that the blue paper roses were part of the fun, Blair said, "Well,I'llmatch you for it. All important decisions ought to be left to chance, to avoid the burden of responsibility!" A pitched penny favored Blair, and Mrs. Todd did not see the 'handsome couples.' It was at the end of the first week, when they were all dining with Mrs. Richie—the evening meal was beginning to be called dinner nowadays in Mercer; that Mrs. Richie's soft eyes, which took duty and energy and ability so sweetly and trustingly for granted,—Mrs. Richie's believing eyes did for Blair what Robert Ferguson's vociferating truthfulness had not been able to accomplish. It was after dinner, and she and Blair had gone into the little plant-room, where the air was sweet with hyacinths and the moist greenness of ferns.
"Blair," she said, putting her soft hand on his arm; "I want to say something. You won't mind?"
"Mind anythingyousay? I should think not!"
"It is only that I want you to know that, when the time comes, I shall think it very fine in you, with your tastes and temperament, to buckle down at the Works. I shall admire you very much then, Blair."
He gave her a droll look. "Alas, dear Mrs. Richie," he began; but she interrupted him.
"Your mother will be so proud and happy when you get to work; and I wanted you to know that I, too—"
He took her hand from his arm and lifted it to his lips; there was a courtliness about Blair, and a certain gravity, which at moments gave him positive distinction. "If there is any good in me," he said, "you would bring it out." Then he smiled. "But probably there isn't any."
"Nonsense!" she cried, and hesitated; he saw that her leaf-brown eyes were wet. "You must make your life worth while, Blair. You must! It would be such a dreadful failure if you didn't do anything but enjoy yourself." He was keenly touched. He did not kiss her hand again; he just put his arm around her, as David might have done, and gave her a hug. "Mrs. Richie! I—Iwillbrace up!"
"You are a dear fellow," she said, and kissed him. Then they went back to the other three, to find Elizabeth in a gale of teasing merriment because, she said, David was so "terribly talkative"!
"He has sat there like a bump on a log for fifteen minutes," she complained. "Say something, dummy!" she commanded.
David only chuckled, and pulled Blair into a corner to talk. "You girls keep on your own side; don't interrupt serious conversation," he said. "Blair, I want to ask you—" And in a minute the two young men were deep in their own affairs. It was amusing to see how quickly all four of them fell back into the comfortable commonplace of old friendship, the men roaring over some college reminiscences, and the two girls grumbling at being left out. "Really," said Mrs. Richie, "I should think none of you were more than fifteen!"
That night, when he took his sister home, Blair was very silent. Her little trickle of talk about David and Elizabeth was apparently unheard. As they turned into their own street, the full moon, just rising out of the river mists, suddenly flooded the waste-lands beyond the Works; the gaunt outlines of the Foundry were touched with ethereal silver, and the Maitland house, looming up in a great black mass, made a gulf of shadow that drowned the dooryard and spread half-way across the squalid street. Beyond the shadow, Shantytown, in the quiet splendor of the moon, seemed as intangible as a dream.
"Beautiful!" Blair said, involuntarily. He stood for a silent moment, drinking the beauty like wine, perhaps it was the exhilaration of it that made him say abruptly: "Perhaps I'll not go abroad. Perhaps I'll pitch in."
Nannie fairly jumped with astonishment. "Blair! You mean to go into the Works? This summer? Oh, how pleased Mamma would be! It would be perfectly splendid.Oh!" Nannie gave his arm a speechless squeeze.
"If I do, it will be because Mrs. Richie bolstered me up. Of course I would hate it like the devil; but perhaps it's the decent thing to do? Oh, well; don't say anything about it. I haven't made up my mind—this is an awful place!" he said, with a shiver, looking across at Shantytown and remembering what was hidden under the glamor of the moon. "The smell of it! Democracy is well enough, Nancy—until you smell it."
"But you could live at the hotel," Nannie reminded him, as he pulled out his latch-key.
"You bet I would," her brother said, laughing. "My dear, not even your society could reconcile me to the slums. But I don't know whether I can screw myself up to the Works, anyhow. David won't be in town, and that would be a nuisance. Well, I'll think it over; but if I do stay, I tell you what it is!—you two girls will have to make things mighty agreeable, or I'll clear out."
He did think it over; but Blair had never been taught the one regal word of life, he had never learned to say "Iought." Therefore it needed more talks with Mrs. Richie, more days with Elizabeth—David, confound him! wouldn't come, because he had to pack, but Nannie tagged on behind; it needed the "bolstering up" of much approval on the part of the onlookers, and much self-approval, too, before the screwing-up process reached a point where he went into his mother's office in the Works and told her that if she was ready to take him on, he was ready to go to work.
Mrs. Maitland was absolutely dumb with happiness. He wanted to go to work! He asked to be taken on! "What do you saynow, friend Ferguson?" she jeered; "you thought he was going to play at his painting for another year, and you wanted me to put his nose to the grindstone, and make him earn the money to pay for that fool picture. Isn't it better to have him come to it of his own accord? I'd pay for ten pictures, if they made him want to go to work. As for his painting, it will be his father over again. My husband had his fancies about it, too, but he gave it all up when he married me; marriage always gives a man common sense,—marriage and business. That's how it's going to be with Blair," she ended complacently. "Blair has brains; I've always said so."
Robert Ferguson did not deny the brains, but he was as astonished as she.
"I believe," he challenged Mrs. Richie, "youput him up to it? You always could wind that boy round your finger."
"I did talk to him," she confessed; it was their last interview, for she and David were starting East that night, and Mr. Ferguson had come in to say good-by. "I talked to him—a little. Mrs. Maitland's disappointment about him went to my heart. Besides, I am very fond of Blair; there is a great deal of good in him. You are prejudiced."
"No I'm not. I admit that as his mother says, 'he's no fool'; but that only makes his dilly-dallying so much the worse. Still, I believe that if she were to lose all her money, and he were to fall very much in love and be refused, he might amount to something. But it would need both things to make a man of him."
Robert Ferguson sighed, and Mrs. Richie left the subject of the curative effect of unsuccessful love, with nervous haste. "I am going to charge Elizabeth and Nannie to do all they can to make it pleasant for him, so that he won't find the Works too terrible," she said. At which reflection upon the Works, Mr. Ferguson barked so fiercely that she felt quite at ease with him. But his barking did not prevent her from telling the girls that business would be very hard for Blair, and they must cheer him up: "Do try to amuse him! You know it is going to be very stupid for him in Mercer."
Nannie, of course, needed no urging; as for Elizabeth, she was a little contemptuous. Oh yes; she would do what she could, she said. "Of course, I'm awfully fond of Blair, but—"
The fact was, she was contrasting in her own mind the man who had to be "amused" to keep him at his work, with David—"working himself to death!" she told Nannie, proudly. And Nannie, quick to feel the slur in her words, said:
"Yes, but it is quite different with Blair. Blair doesn'thaveto do anything, you know."
Still, thanks to Mrs. Richie, he was at least going to pretend to do something. And so, at a ridiculously high salary, he entered, as he told Elizabeth humorously, "upon his career." The only thing he did to make life more tolerable for himself was to live in the hotel instead of in his mother's house. But it was characteristic of him that he left the wonderful old canvas—the "fourteen by eighteen inch" picture, hanging on the wall in Nannie's parlor. "You ought to have something fit for a civilized eye to rest upon," he told her, "and I can see it when I come to see you." If his permanent departure for the River House wounded his mother, she made no protest; she only lifted a pleased eyebrow when he dropped in to supper, which, she noticed, he was apt to do whenever Elizabeth happened to take tea with Nannie. When he did come, Sarah Maitland used to look about the dining-room table, with its thick earthenware dishes—the last of the old Canton service had found its way to the ash-barrel; she used to glance at the three young people with warm satisfaction. "Like old times!" she would say kindly; "only needs David to make it complete."
Mrs. Maitland was sixty-two that spring, but there was no stoop of the big shoulders, no sign of that settling and shrinking that age brings. She was at the full tide of her vigor, and her happiness in having her son beside her in the passion of her life, which was second only to her passion for him, showed itself in clumsy efforts to flaunt her contentment before her world. Every morning, with varying unpunctuality, Blair came into her office at the Works where she had had a desk placed for him. He was present, because she insisted that he should be, at the regular conferences which she held with the heads of departments. She made a pretense of asking his advice, which was as amusing to Mr. Ferguson and the under-superintendents as it was tiresome to Blair. For after his first exhilaration in responding to Mrs. Richie's high belief in him, the mere doing of duty began gradually to pall. Her belief helped him through the first four or five months, then the whole thing became a bore. His work was ludicrously perfunctory, and his listlessness when in the office was apparent to everybody. At the bottom of her heart, Sarah Maitland must have known that it was all a farce. Blair was worth nothing to the business; his only relation to it was the weekly drawing of an unearned "salary." Perhaps if Mrs. Richie had been in Mercer, to make again and again the appeal of confident expectation, that little feeble sense of duty which had started him upon his "career," might have struck a root down through feeling, into the rock-bed of character. But as it was, not even the girls' obedience to her order, "to amuse Blair," made up for the withdrawal of her own sustaining inspiration.
But at least Nannie and Elizabeth kept him fairly contented out of business hours; and so long as he was contented, things were smooth between him and his mother. There was, as Blair expressed it, "only one rumpus" that whole summer, and it was a very mild one, caused by the fact that he did not go to church. On those hot July Sunday mornings, his mother in black silk, and Nannie in thin lawn, sat in the family pew, fanning themselves, and waiting; Nannie, constantly turning to look down the aisle; Sarah Maitland intent for a familiar step and a hand upon the little baize-lined door of the pew. The "rumpus" came when, on the third Sunday, Blair was called to account.
It was after supper, in the hot dusk in Nannie's parlor; Elizabeth was there, and the two girls, in white dresses, were fanning themselves languidly; Blair, at the piano, was playing the Largo, with much feeling. The windows were open. It was too warm for lamps, and the room was lighted only by the occasional roar of flames, breaking fan-like from the tops of the stacks in the Yards. Suddenly, in the midst of their idle talk, Mrs. Maitland came in; she paused for a moment before the dark oblong of canvas on the wall beside the door. Of course, in the half-light, the little dim Mother of God—immortal maternity!—could scarcely be seen.
"Umph," she said, "a dirty piece of canvas, at about twenty dollars a square inch!" No one spoke. "Let's see;" she calculated;—"ore is $10 a ton; 20 tons to a car; say one locomotive hauls 25 cars. Well, there you have it: a trainload of iron ore, to pay forthis!" she snapped a thumb and finger against the canvas. Blair jumped—then ran his right hand up the keyboard in a furious arpeggio. But he said nothing. Mrs. Maitland, moving away from the picture, blew out her lips in a loud sigh. "Well," she said; "tastes differ, as the old woman said when she kissed her cow."
Still no one spoke, but Elizabeth rose to offer her a chair. "No," she said, coming over and resting an elbow on the mantelpiece, "I won't sit down. I'm going in a minute."
As she stood there, unrest spread about her as rings from a falling stone spread on the surface of a pool. Blair yawned, and got up from the piano; Elizabeth fidgeted; Nannie began to talk nervously.
"Blair," said his mother, her strident voice over-riding the girls' chatter, "why don't you come to church?"
His answer was perfectly unevasive and entirely good-natured. "Well, for one thing, I don't believe the things the church teaches."
"What do you believe?" she demanded. And he answered carelessly, that really, he hardly knew.
It was, of course, the old difference of the generations; but it was more marked because these two generations had never spoken the same language, therefore quiet, sympathetic disagreement was impossible. It was impossible, too, because the actual fact was that neither her belief nor his disbelief were integral to their lives. Her creed was a barbarous anthropomorphism, which had created an offended and puerile god—a god of foreign missions and arid church-going and eternal damnation. The fear of her god (such as he was) would, no doubt, have protected her against certain physical temptations, to which, as it happened, her temperament never inclined; but he had never safeguarded her from the temptation of cutthroat competition, or even of business shrewdness which her lawyer showed her how to make legal. Blair, on the contrary, had long ago discarded the naive brutalities of Presbyterianism; church-going bored him, and he was not interested in saving souls in Africa. But, like most of us—like his mother, in fact, he had a god of his own, a god who might have safeguarded him against certain intellectual temptations; cheating at cards, or telling the truth, if the truth would compromise a woman. But as he had no desire to cheat at cards, and the women whom he might have compromised did not need to be lied about, his god was of as little practical value to him as his mother's was to her. So they were neither of them speaking of realities when Mrs. Maitland said: "What do you believe? What have you got instead of God?"
"Honor," Blair said promptly. "What do you mean by honor?" she said, impatiently.
"Well," her son reflected, "there are things a man simply can't do; that's all. And that's honor, don't you know. Of course, religion is supposed to keep you from doing things, too. But there's this difference: religion, if you pick pockets—I speak metaphorically; threatens you with hell. Honor threatens you with yourself." As he spoke he frowned, as if a disagreeable idea had occurred to him.
His mother frowned, too. That hell and a man's self might be the same thing had never struck Sarah Maitland. She did not understand what he meant, and feeling herself at a disadvantage, retaliated with the reproof she might have administered to a boy of fifteen: "You don't know what you are talking about!"
The man of twenty-five laughed lazily. "Your religion is very amusing, my dear mother."
Her face darkened. She took her elbow from the mantelpiece, and seemed uncertain what to do. Blair sprang to open the door, but she made an irritated gesture. "I know how to open doors," she said. She threw a brief "good-night" to Elizabeth, and turned a cheek to Nannie for the kiss that had fallen there, soft as a little feather, in all the nights of all the years they had lived together. "'Night, Blair," she said shortly; then hesitated, her hand on the door-knob. There was an instant when the command"Go to church!"trembled upon her lips, but it was not spoken. "I advise you," she said roughly, "to get over your conceit, and try to get some religion into you. Your father and your grandfather didn't think they could get along without it; they went to church! But you evidently think you are so much better than they were that you can stay away."