"Not there. . . ."
All night long Elizabeth watched a phantom landscape flit past the window of the sleeping-car. Sometimes a cloud of smoke, shot through with sparks, brushed the glass like a billowing curtain, and sometimes the thunderous darkness of a tunnel swept between her and spectral trees or looming hilltops. She lay there on her pillows, looking at the flying glimmer of the night and drawing long breaths of peace. The steady, rhythmical pounding of the wheels, the dull, rushing roar of the rails, the black, spinning country outside her window, shut away her old world of miseries and shames. Behind the stiff green curtains, that swung in and out, in and out, to the long roll of the car, there were no distractions, no fears of interruption, no listening apprehensions; she could relax into the wordless and exultant certainty of her purpose.
For at last, after these long months of mere endurance, she had a purpose.
And how calmly she was fulfilling it! "For I am not angry," she said to herself, with the same surprise she had felt when, at Willis's that afternoon, she had denied Blair's charge of anger. Outside in the darkness, all the world was asleep. The level stretches of vanishing fields, the faint glisten of roads, were empty. When the train swept thundering through little towns, the flying station lights, the twinkle of street lamps, even the solitary lanterns of switchmen running along the tracks, made the sleep seem only more profound. But Elizabeth was awake in every fiber; once or twice, for the peace of it, she closed her eyes; but she did not mean to sleep. She meant to think out every step that she must take; but just at first, in the content of decision, she did not even want to think. She only wanted to feel that the end had come.
It was during the row up the river that her purpose had cleared before her eyes; for an instant the sight of it had startled her into that pallor which had frightened Blair; then she accepted it with a passionate satisfaction. It needed no argument; she knew without reasoning about it what she must do. But the way to do it was not plain; it was while she and Blair sat at dinner, and he read his paper and she played with her food, that a plan grew slowly in her mind. The carrying it out—at least to this point; the alert and trembling fear of some obstacle, had greatly exhausted her. It had also blotted out everything but itself. She forgot her uncle and Miss White; that she was going to give them pain did not occur to her until safe from their possible interference, in the dark, behind the slowly swaying curtains of her section, her fatigue began to lessen. Then, vaguely, she thought of them. . . . they would be sorry. She frowned, faintly troubled by their sorrow. It was midnight before she remembered Blair: poor Blair! he cared so much about her. How could he,—when she did not care for him? Still, it did not follow that not being loved prevented you from loving. David had ceased to love her, but that had not made her love cease. Yes; she was afraid they would all be unhappy; but it would be only for a while. She sighed; it was a peaceful sigh. Her regret for the sorrow that she would cause was the regret of one far off, helpless to avert the pain, who has no relation to it except that of an observer. She said to herself, calmly, "Poor Uncle Robert."
As she grew more rested, the vagueness of her regret sharpened a little. She realized with a pang how worried they would be—before they began to be sorry; and worry is so hard to bear! "I wish I could have spared Uncle Robert and Cherry-pie," she said, in real distress. It occurred to her that she had given them many unhappy moments. "I was always a trouble; what a pity I was ever born." She thought suddenly of her mother, remembering how she used to excuse her temper on the ground that her mother had had no self-control. She smiled faintly in the darkness at the childishness of such an excuse. "She wasn't to blame. I could have conquered it, but I didn't. I did nothing all my life but make trouble." She thought of her life as a thing of the past. "I was a great trial to them; it will be better for everybody this way," she said; and nestled down into the thought of the "way," with a satisfaction which was absolute comfort. Better; but still better if she had never lived. Then Blair would not have been disinherited, and by being disinherited driven into the dishonor of keeping money not intended for him. "It's really all my fault," she reflected, and looked out of the window with unseeing eyes. Yes; all that had happened was her fault. Oh, how many things she had hurt and spoiled! She had injured Blair; his mother had said so. And poor Nannie! for Nannie's offense grew out of Elizabeth's conduct. As for David—David, who had stopped loving her. . . .
Well, she wouldn't hurt people any more, now. Never any more.
Just then the train jarred slowly to a standstill in a vast train-shed; up under its glass and girders, arc-lamps sent lurching shadows through the smoke and touched the clouds of steam with violet gleams. Elizabeth could see dark, gnome-like creatures, each with a hammer, and with a lantern swinging from a bent elbow, crouching along by the cars and tapping every wheel. She counted the blows that tested the trucks for the climb up the mountains: click-click; click-click. She was glad they were testing them; she must get across the mountains safely; there must be no interference or delay; she had so little time! For by morning they would guess, those three worried people—who had not yet begun to be sorry—they would guess what she had done, and they would follow her. She saw the gnomes slouching back past the cars, upright this time; then she felt the enormous tug of the engine beginning the up-grade. It grew colder, and she was glad of the blankets which she had not liked to touch when she first lay down in her berth. Outside there was a faint whitening along the horizon; but it dimmed, and the black outlines of the mountains were lost, as if the retreating night hesitated and returned; then she saw that her window was touched here and there by slender javelins of rain. They came faster and faster, striking on and over one another; now they turned to drops; she stopped thinking, absorbed in watching a drop roll down the glass—pause, lurch forward, touch another drop; then a third; then zigzag rapidly down the pane. She found herself following the racing drops with fascinated eyes; she even speculated as to which would reach the bottom first; she had a sense of luxury in being able, in the fortress of her berth, to think of such things as racing raindrops. By the time it was light enough to distinguish the stretching fields again, it was raining hard. Once in a while the train rushed past a farm-house, where the smoke from the chimney sagged in the gray air until it lay like a rope of mist along the roof. It was so light now that she could see the sodden carpet of yellow leaves under the maples, and she noticed that the crimson pennons of the sumacs drooped and dripped and clung together. The monotonous clatter of the wheels had fallen into a rhythm, which pounded out steadily and endlessly certain words which were the refrain of her purpose:"Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him."Sometimes she reminded herself, meekly, that he no longer loved her. But there was no trace of resentment in her mind; how could he love her? Nor did the fact that his love had ceased make any difference in her purpose: "Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him."
When the day broke—a bleary, gray day, cold, and with sweeping showers of rain, she slept for a little while; but wakened with a start, for the train was still. Had they arrived? Had she lost a moment? Then she recognized the locality, and knew that there was an hour yet before she could be in the same city with him; and again the wheels began their clamorous assertion: "the right to see him; the right to see him."
Her plan was simple enough; she would go at once to Mrs. Richie's house and ask for the doctor. "I won't detain him very long; it will only take a little while to tell him," she said to herself. It came over her with the shivering sense of danger escaped, that in another day she would have been too late, his mother would be at home! "She wouldn't let him see me," she thought, fearfully. Afterward, after she had seen him, she would take a train to New York and cross the ferry…. "The water is pretty clean there," she thought.
She was dressed and ready to leave the train long before the station was reached. When the unkempt, haggard crowd swarmed off the cars and poured its jostling, hurrying length through the train-shed dim with puffing clouds of steam and clamorous with engines, Elizabeth was as fresh as if she had just come from her own house. She looked at herself in one of the big mirrors of the station dressing-room with entire satisfaction. "I am a little pretty even yet," she told herself, candidly. She wanted very much to be pretty now. When she went out to the street and found it raining in a steady, gray downpour, her heart sank,—oh, she must not get wet and draggled, now! Just for this hour she must be the old Elizabeth, the Elizabeth that he used to love, fresh, with starry eyes and a shell-like color in her cheeks!—and indeed the cold rain was making her face glow like a rose; but her eyes were solemn, not starry. As her cab jolted along the rainy streets, past the red-brick houses with their white shutters and scoured door-steps—houses were people were eating their breakfasts and reading their morning papers—Elizabeth, sitting on the frayed seat of the old hack, looked out of the window and thought how strange it all was! It would be just like this to-morrow morning, and she would not know it. "How queer!" she said to herself. But she was not frightened. "I suppose at the last minute I shall be frightened," she reflected. Then, for a moment, she forgot David and tried to realize the unrealizable: "everything will be going on just the same, andI—" She could not realize it, but she did not doubt it. When the cab drew up at Mrs. Richie's door, she was careful to pay the man before she got out so that her hat should not be spoiled by the rain when David saw it.
"He isn't in, miss," the maid told her in answer to her ring.
Elizabeth gasped. "What! Not here? Where is he?"
"He went down to the beach, 'm, yesterday, to see to the closing-up of the cottage, 'm."
"When is he coming back?" she said, faintly; and the woman said, smiling, "To-morrow, 'm."
Elizabeth stood blankly on the door-step. To-morrow? There was not going to be any to-morrow! What should she do? Her plan had been so definite and detailed that this interruption of his absence—a possibility which had not entered into her calculations—threw her into absolute confusion. He was away from home! What could she do?
Entirely forgetting the rain, she turned away and walked aimlessly down the street. "They'll know I've come here, and they'll find me before I can see him!" she said to herself, in terror. "I must go somewhere and decide what to do." She went into the nearest hotel and took a room. "I must plan; if I wait until he comes back, they'll find me!" But it was an hour before her plan was made; when it was, she sprang up with the old, tumultuous joyousness. Why, of course! How stupid not to have thought of it at once! She was so entirely oblivious of everything but her own purpose that she would have gone out of the hotel on the moment, had not the clerk checked her with some murmur about "a little charge." Elizabeth blushed to her temples. "Oh, Ibegyour pardon!" she said. In her mortification she wished that the bill had been twice as large. But when she was out in the rain, hurrying to the station, again she forgot everything except her consuming purpose. In the waiting-room—there were four hours before the train started—the panic thought took possession of her that she might miss him if she went down to the beach. "It's raining, and he may not stay over until to-morrow; he may be coming up this afternoon. But if I stay here they'll come and find me!" She could not face this last alternative. "They'll find me, and I won't be able to tell him; they'll take me home, and he will not have been told!" Sitting on the wooden settee in the ladies' waiting-room, she watched the clock until its gaunt white face blurred before her eyes. How the long hand crawled! Once, in a spasm of fright, she thought that it had stopped, and perhaps she had lost her train!
But at last the moment came; she started,—and as she drew nearer and nearer her goal, her whole body strained forward, as a man dying of thirst strains toward a spring gleaming in the desert distance; once she sighed with that anticipation of relief that is a shiver. Again the monotonous clatter of the wheels beat out the words that all night long over the mountains had grooved themselves into her brain: "Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him." Love, which that one mad hour, nearly three years before, had numbed and paralyzed, was awakening. It was as if a slowly rising torrent, dammed by some immovable barrier, had at last reached the brim,—trembled, hesitated: then leaped in foaming overflow into its old course! She thought of all the things she was going to tell him (but oh, they were so many, so many; how could she say them all?). "'I never was so true as when I was false. I never loved you so much as when I hated you. I never longed for your arms as I did when—' O God, give me time to tell him that! Don't let them find me before I can tell him that.Don'tlet him have gone back. God, please,pleaselet me find him at the cottage so I can tell him." She was sitting on the plush cushion of the jolting, swaying old car, her hand on the back of the seat in front of her, every muscle tense with readiness to spring to her feet the moment the train stopped.
It was still raining when she got off at the little station which had sprung up out of the sand to accommodate a summer population. It was deserted now, and the windows were boarded over. A passer-by, under a dripping umbrella, lounged along the platform and stopped to look at her. "Come down to see cottages?" he inquired. She said no; but could she get a carriage to take her over to Little Beach?
He shook his head sympathetically. "A hack?Here?Lord, no! There isn't no depot carriage running at this time of year. You'd ought to have got off at Normans, the station above this, and then you could have drove over; fourteen miles, though. Something of a drive on an evening like this! But Normans is quite a place. They run two depot carriages there all winter and a dozen in summer."
"I'll walk," she told him, briefly.
"It's more 'an three miles," he warned her; "and it's sheeting down! IfI had such a thing as an umbrella, except this one, I'd—"
But she had gone. She knew the way; she remembered the summer—oh, so long ago!—when she and Nannie had driven over that sandy road along the beach on their way to Mrs. Richie's house. It was so deep with mud now that sometimes she had to walk outside the wheel-ruts into the wiry beach-grass. The road toiled among the dunes; on the shore on her right she could hear the creaming lap of the waves; but rain was driving in from the sea in an impenetrable curtain, and only when in some turn of the wind it lifted and shifted could she catch a glimpse of the scarf of foam lying on the sands, or see the gray heave of an endless expanse that might be water or might be sky folded down into the water. It was growing dark; sometimes she blundered from the road to one side or the other; sometimes she thought she saw approaching figures—a man, perhaps, or a vehicle; but as she neared them they were only bushes or leaning, wind-beaten pines. She was drenched and her clothes seemed intolerably heavy. Oh, how David would laugh at her hat! She put up her hand, in its soaked and slippery glove, and touched the roses about the crown and laughed herself. "He won't mind," she said, contentedly. She had forgotten that he had stopped loving her. She began to sing under her breath the old tune of her gay, inconsequent girlhood—
"Oh, won't it be joyful, joyful, joyful,Oh, won't it be joyful, to meet…"
She stopped; something warm was on her face; she had not known that she was weeping. Suddenly, far off, she saw a glimmer of light…. Mrs. Richie's house! Her heart rose in her throat. "David," she said aloud, weakly, "David, I'm coming just as fast as I can."
But when she opened the door of the living-room in the little house that sat so close to the crumpling lap and crash of the tide, and saw him, his pipe in his hand, half rising from his chair by the fire and turning around to see who had entered, she could hardly speak his name—"David."
"… And that was Thursday; your letter had come in the first mail; and—oh, hush, hush; it was not a wicked letter, David. Don't you suppose I know that, now? I knew it—the next day. And I read it. I don't know just what happened then. I can't remember very clearly. I think I felt 'insulted.' … It sounds so foolish to say that, doesn't it? But I was just a girl then, and you know what girls are like…. David, I am not making any excuse. There isn't any excuse. I am just—telling you. I have to talk slowly; I am tired. You won't mind if I talk slowly? … I suppose I thought I had been 'insulted'; and I remember something seemed to flame up. You know how it always was with me? David, I have never been able to be angry since that day. Isn't that strange? I've never been angry since. Well, then, I went out to walk. I remember Cherry-pie called down-stairs to know if I had a clean pocket-handkerchief. I remember that; and yet I can't seem to remember why I went out to walk. … And he came up and spoke to me. Oh, I forgot to tell you: he'd been in love with me. I meant to tell you about that as soon as we were married…. Where was I?—Oh, yes; he spoke to me…."
Her voice broke with exhaustion; she closed her eyes and lay back in the big chair. David put her hand against his face, and held it there until she opened her eyes. She looked at him dumbly for a little while; then the slow, monotonous outpouring of all the silent months began again: "And I said I hated you. And he said if I married him, it would show you that I hated you. David, he was fond of me. I have to remember that. It wouldn't be fair not to remember that, would it? I was really the one to blame. Oh, I must be fair to him; he was fond of me…. And all that afternoon, after he married me, I was so glad to think how wicked I was. I knew how you would suffer. And that made me glad to be wicked…."
There was a long pause; he pulled a little shawl across her feet, and laid her hand over his eyes; but he was silent.
"Then," she said, in a whisper, "I died, I think. I suppose that is why I have never been angry since. Something was killed in me…. I've wondered a good deal about that. David, isn't it strange how part of you can die, and yet you can go on living? Of course I expected to die. I prayed all the time that I might. But I went on living;—you are glad I lived?" she said, incredulously, catching some broken murmur from behind his hands in which his face was hidden; "glad? Why, I should have thought—Well, that was the most awful time of all. The only peace I had, just single minutes of peace, was when I remembered that you hated me."
He laid his face against her knee, and she felt the fierce intake of his breath.
"Youdidn'thate me? Oh, don't say you didn't, David. Don't! It was the only comfort I had, to have you despise me. Although that was just at first. Afterward, last May, when you walked down to Nannie's with me that afternoon, and I thought you had got all over it, I…something seemed to be eating my heart away. That seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? I don't understand how I could feel two ways. But just at first I wanted you to hate me. I thought you would be less unhappy if you hated me; and besides, I wanted to feel the whips. I felt them—oh, I felt them!…And all the time I thought that soon I would die. But death would have been too easy. I had to go on living." There was another long silence; he kissed her hand once; but he did not speak…. "And the days went on, and went on, and went on. Sometimes I didn't feel anything; but sometimes it was like stringing sharp beads on a red-hot wire. I suppose that sounds foolish? But when his mother disinherited him, I knew I would have to go on—stringing beads. Because it would have been mean, then, to leave him. You see that, David? Besides, I was a spoiled thing, a worthless thing. If staying with him would make up for the harm I had done him,—Mrs. Maitland told me I had injured him; why of course, there was nothing else to do. I knew you would understand. So I stayed. 'Unkind to me?'" She bent forward a little to hear his smothered question. "Oh no; never. I used to wish he would be. But he—loved me"—she shuddered. "Oh, David, how I have dreamed of your arms. David . . . David . . ."
They had forgotten that each had believed love had ceased in the other; they did not even assert that it was unchanged. Nor was there any plea for forgiveness on either side. The moment was too great for that.
She sank back in her chair with a long breath. He rose, and kneeling beside her, drew her against his breast. She sighed with comfort. "Here! At last to be here. I never thought it would be. It is heaven. Yes; I shall remember that I have been in heaven. But I don't think I shall be sent to hell. No; God won't punish me any more. It will be just sleep."
He had to bend his ear almost to her white lips to catch her whisper. "What did I say? I don't remember exactly; I am so happy. . . . Let me be quiet a little while. I'm pretty tired. May I stay until morning? It is raining, and if I may stay . . . I will go away very early in the morning." The long, rambling, half-whispered story had followed the fierce statement, flung at him when she burst in out of the storm, and stood, sodden with rain, trembling with fatigue and cold, and pushing from her his alarmed and outstretched hands,—the statement that she had left Blair! There were only a few words in the outburst of terrible anger which had been dormant in her for all these years: "He stole your wife. Now he is stealing your money. I told him he couldn't keep them both. Your wife has come back to you. I have left him—"
Even while she was stammering, shrilly, the furious finality, he caught her, swaying, in his arms. It was an hour before she could speak coherently of the happenings of the last twenty-four hours; she had to be warmed and fed and calmed. And it was curious how the lover in him and the physician in him alternated in that hour; he had been instant with the soothing commonplace of help,—her wet clothes, her chilled body, her hunger, were his first concern. "I know you are hungry," he said, cheerfully; but his hands shook as he put food before her. When he drew her chair up to the fire, and kneeling down, took off her wet shoes, he held her slender, tired feet in his hands and chafed them gently; but suddenly laid them against his breast, warming them, murmuring over them with a sobbing breath, as though he felt the weariness of the little feet, plodding, plodding, plodding through the rain to find him. The next minute he was the doctor, ordering her with smiling words to lie back in her chair and rest; then looking at her with a groan.
When at last she was coherent again, she began that pitiful confession, and he listened; at first walking up and down; then coming nearer; sitting beside her; then kneeling; then lifting her and holding her against his breast. When, relaxing in his arms like a tired child, she ended, almost in a whisper, with her timid plea to be allowed to stay until morning, the tears dropped down his face.
"Until morning?" he said, with a laugh that broke into a sob—"until death!"
Long before this his first uneasiness, at the situation—for her sake,—had disappeared. The acquired uneasinesses of convention vanish before the primal realities. The long-banked fire had glowed, then broken into flames that consumed such chaff as "propriety." As he held her in his arms after that whispered and rambling story of despair, he trembled all over. For Elizabeth there had never been a single moment of conventional consciousness; she was solemnly unaware of everything but the fact that they were together for this last moment. When he said "until death," she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Yes," she said, "until death."
Something in her broken whisper touched him like ice. He was suddenly rigid. "Elizabeth, where did you mean to go to-morrow morning?" She made no answer, but he felt that she was alert. "Elizabeth! Tell me! what do you mean?" His loud and terrified command made her quiver; she was bewildered by the unexpectedness of his suspicion, but too dulled and stunned to evade it. David, with his ear close to her lips, raised his head. "Elizabeth, don't you understand? Dear, this is life, not death, for us both."
She drew away from him with a long sigh, struggling up feebly out of his arms and groping for her chair; she shook her head, smiling faintly. "I'm sorry you guessed. No, I can't go on living. There's no use talking about it, David. I can't."
He stood looking down at her, pale from the shock of his discovery. "Listen to me, Elizabeth: you belong to me. Don't you understand, dear? You always have belonged to me. He knew it when he stole you from yourself, as well as from me. You have always been mine. You have come back to me. Do you think I will let Blair Maitland or death or God Almighty, steal you now? Never. You belong to me! to me!"
"But—" she began.
"Oh, Elizabeth, what do we care for what they call right and wrong?'Right' is being together!"
She frowned in a puzzled way. She had not been thinking of "right and wrong"; her mind had been absorbed by the large and simple necessity of death. But his inevitable reasonableness, ignoring her organic impulse, was already splitting hairs to justify an organic impulse of his own.
"God gave you to me," he said, "and by God I'll keep you! That's what is right; if we parted now it would be wrong."
It seemed as if the gale of passion which had been slowly rising in him in these hours they had been together blew away the mists in which her mind had been groping, blew away the soothing fogs of death which had been closing in about her, and left her, shrinking, in sudden, confusing light.
"Wrong?" she said, dazed; "I hadn't thought about that. David, I wouldn't have come to you except—except because it was the end. Anything else is impossible, you know."
"Why?" he demanded.
"I am married," she said, bewildered.
He laughed under his breath. "Blair Maitland will take his own medicine, now," he said;—"you are married tome!"
The triumph in his voice, while it vaguely alarmed her, struck some answering chord in her mind, for while mechanically she contradicted him, some deeper self was saying, "yes; yes."
But aloud she said, "It can't be, David; don't you see it can't be?"
"But itisalready; I will never let you go. I've got you—at last. Elizabeth, listen to me; while you've been talking, I've thought it all out: as things are, I don't think you can possibly get a divorce from Blair and marry me. He's 'kind' to you, you say; and he's 'decent,' and he doesn't drink—and so forth and so forth. I know the formula to keep a woman with a man she hates and call it being respectable. No, you can't get a divorce from him; but he can get a divorce from you … if you give him the excuse to do so."
Elizabeth looked at him with perfectly uncomprehending eyes. The innocence of them did not touch him. For the second time in her life she was at the mercy of Love. "Blair is fond of me," she said; "he never would give me a divorce. He has told me so a hundred times. Do you suppose I haven't begged him to let me go? On my knees I begged him. No, David, there is no way out except—"
"There is a way out if you love me enough to—come to me. Then," he said in a whisper, "he will divorce you and we can be married. Oh, Elizabeth, death is not the way out; it islife, dear, life! Will you live? Will you give me life?" He was breathing as if he had been running; he held her fingers against his lips until he bruised them.
She understood. After a minute of silence she said, faintly: "As for me, nothing matters. Even if it is wicked—"
"It is not wicked!"
"Well, if it were, if you wanted me I would come. I don't seem to care. Nothing seems to me wrong in the whole world. And nothing right. Do you understand, David? I am—done. My life is worthless, anyhow. Use it—and throw it away. But it would ruin you. No, I won't do it."
"Ruin me? It would make me! I have shriveled, I have starved, I have frozen without you. Ask my mother if what I tell you isn't true." She caught her breath and drew away from him. "Your mother!" she said, faintly. But he did not notice the recoil.
"It would end your career," she said. She was confused by the mere tumult of his words.
"Career! The only career I want isyou. Medicine isn't the only thing in the world, nor Philadelphia the only place to practise it. And if I can't be a doctor, I can break stones for my wife. Elizabeth, to love you is the only career I want. But you—can you? Am I asking more than you can give? Do you care what people say? We may not be able to be married for a year. Longer, perhaps; the law takes time. They will call it disgrace, you know, the people who don't know what love means. Could you bear that—for me? Do you love me enough for that, Elizabeth?"
His voice was hoarse with passion. He was on his knees beside her, his face hot against hers, his arms around her. Not only his bitterly thought-out theories of individualism, but all his years of decent living, contributed to his overthrow at that moment. He was a man; and here was his woman, who had been torn from him by a thief: she had come back to him, she had toiled back through the storm, she had fought back through cruel and imprisoning ties that had held her for nearly three years; should he not keep her, now that she had come? The cave-dweller in him cried out "Yes!" To let her go now, would be to loosen his fingers just as they gripped the neck of the thief who had robbed him! In the madness of that moment of hate and love, his face on hers, his arms around her, David did not know that his tears were wet on her lips.
"Mine," he said, panting; "mine! my own has come back to me. Say so; tell me so yourself. Say it! I want to hear you say it."
"Why David, I have always been yours. But I am not worth taking. I am not—"
[Illustration: "WILL YOU LIVE? WILL YOU GIVE ME LIFE?"]
"Hush! You are mine. They shall never part us again. Elizabeth—to-morrow we will go away." She sank against him in silence; for a while he was silent, too. Then, in a low voice, he told her how they must carry out a plan which had sprung, full-winged, from his mind; "when he knows you have been here to-night," David said,—and trembled from head to foot; "he will divorce you."
She listened, assenting, but bewildered. "I was going to die," she said, faintly; "I don't know how to live. Oh, I think the other way would be better."
But he did not stop to discuss it; he had put her back into the reclining chair—once in a while the physician remembered her fatigue, though for the most part the lover thought only of himself; he saw how white she was, and put her in the big chair; then, drawing up a footstool, he sat down, keeping her hand in his; sometimes he kissed it, but all the time he talked violently of right and wrong. Elizabeth was singularly indifferent to his distinctions; perhaps the deep and primitive experience of looking into the face of Death made her so. At any rate, her question was not "Is it right?" it was only "Is it best?" Was it best for him to do this thing? Would it not injure him? David, brushing away her objections with an exultant belief in himself, was far less elemental. Right? What made right and wrong? Law? Elizabeth knew better! Unless she meant God's law. As far as that went, she was breaking it if she went on living with Blair. As for dying, she had no right to die! She was his. Would she rob him again?
It was all the everlasting, perfectly sincere sophistry of the man who has been swept past honor and prudence and even pity, that poured from David's lips; and with it, love! love! love! Elizabeth, listening to it, carried along by it, had, in the extraordinary confusion of the moment, nothing to oppose to it but her own unworth. To this he refused to listen, closing her lips with his own, and then going on with his quite logical reasoning. His mind was alert to meet and arrange every difficulty and every detail; once, half laughing, he stopped to say, "We'll have to live on your money, Elizabeth. See what I've come to!" The old scruples seemed, beside this new reality, merely ridiculous—although there was a certain satisfaction in throwing overboard that hideous egotism of his, which had made all the trouble that had come to them. "You see," he explained, "we shall go away for a while, until you get your divorce. And it will take time to pick up a practice, especially, in a new place. So you will probably have to support me," he ended, smiling. But she was too much at peace in the haven of his clasping arms even to smile. Once, when he confessed his shame at having doubted her—"for I did," he said; "I actually thought you cared for him!" she roused herself: "It was my fault. I won't let you blame yourself; it was all my fault!" she said; then sank again into dreaming quiet.
It was midnight; the fire had died down; a stick of drift-wood on the iron dogs, gnawed through by shimmering blue and copper flames, broke apart, and a shower of sparks flew up, caught in the soot, and smoldered in spreading rosettes on the chimney-back. The night, pressing black against the windows, was full of the murmurous silence of the rain and the soft advancing crash of the incoming tide; the man and woman were silent, too. Sometimes he would kiss the little scar on her wrist; sometimes press his lips into the soft cup of her palm; there seemed no need of words. It was in one of these silences that David suddenly raised his head and frowned.
"Listen!" he said; then a moment later: "wheels!here?at this time of night!"
Elizabeth crouched back in her chair. "It is Blair. He has followed me—"
"No, no; it is somebody who has lost his way in the rain. Yes, I hear him; he is coming in to ask the road."
There were hurried steps on the porch, and Elizabeth grew so deadly white that David said again, reassuringly: "It's some passer-by. I'll send him about his business."
Loud, vehement knocking interrupted him, and he said, cheerfully: "Confound them, making such a noise! Don't be frightened; it is only some farmer—"
He took up a lamp and, closing the door of the living-room behind him, went out into the hall; some one, whoever it was, was fumbling with the knob of the front door as if in terrible haste. David slipped the bolt and would have opened the door, but it seemed to burst in, and against it, clinging to the knob, panting and terrified, stood his mother.
"David! Is she—Am I too late? David! Where is Elizabeth?Am I too late?"
The rainy dawn which Elizabeth had seen glimmering in the steam and smoke of the railroad station filtered wanly through Mercer's yellow fog. In Mrs. Maitland's office-dining-room the gas, burning in an orange halo, threw a livid light on the haggard faces of four people who had not slept that night.
When Blair had come frantically back from his fruitless quest at the hotel to say, "Is she here,now?" Mrs. Richie had sent him at once to Mr. Ferguson, who, roused from his bed, instantly took command.
"Tell me just what has happened, please?" he said.
Blair, almost in collapse, told the story of the afternoon. He held nothing back. In the terror that consumed him, he spared himself nothing; he had made Elizabeth angry; frightfully angry. But she didn't show it; she had even said she was not angry. But she said—and he repeated that sword-like sentence about "David's money and David's wife." Then, almost in a whisper, he added her question about—drowning. "She has—" he said; he did not finish the sentence.
Robert Ferguson made no comment, but his face quivered. "Have you a carriage?" he asked, shrugging into his overcoat. Blair nodded, and they set out.
It was after five when they came back to Mrs. Maitland's dining-room, where the gaslight struggled ineffectually with the fog. They had done everything which, at that hour, could be done.
"Oh, when will it ever get light!" Blair said, despairingly. He pushed aside the food Nannie had placed on the table for them, and dropped his face on his arms. He had a sudden passionate longing for his mother; she would havedonesomething! She would have told these people, these dazed, terrified people! what to do. She always knew what to do. For the first time in his life he needed his mother.
Robert Ferguson, standing at the window, was staring out at the blind, yellow mist. "As soon as it's light enough, we'll get a boat and go down the river," he said, with heavy significance.
"But it is absurd to jump at such a conclusion," Mrs. Richie protested.
"You don't know her," Elizabeth's uncle said, briefly.
Blair echoed the words. "No; you don't know her."
"All the same, I don't believe it!" Mrs. Richie said, emphatically. "For one thing, Blair says that her comb and brush are not on her bureau. A girl doesn't take her toilet things with her when she goes out to—"
"Elizabeth might," Mr. Ferguson said.
Blair, looking up, broke out: "Oh, that money! It's that that has made all the trouble. Why did I say I wouldn't give it up? I'd throw it into the fire, if it would bring her back to me!"
Mrs. Richie was silent. Her face was tense with anxiety, but it was not the same anxiety that plowed the other faces. "Did you go to the depot?" she said. "Perhaps she took the night train. The ticket-agent might have seen her."
"But why should she take a night train?" Blair said; "where would she go?"
"Why should she do a great many things she has done?" Mrs. Richie parried; and added, softly, "I want to speak to you, Blair; come into the parlor for a minute." When they were alone, she said,—her eyes avoiding his; "I have an idea that she has gone to Philadelphia. To see me."
"You? But you are here!"
"Yes; but perhaps she thought I went home yesterday; you thought so."
Blair grasped at a straw of hope. "I will telegraph—" "No; that would be of no use. The servants couldn't answer it; and—and there is no one else there. I will take the morning express, and telegraph you as soon as I get home."
"But I can't wait all day!" he said; "I will wire—" he paused; it struck him like a blow that there was only one person to whom to wire. The blood rushed to his face. "You think that she has gone to him?"
"I think she has gone to me," she told him, coldly. "What more natural?I am an old friend, and she was angry with you."
"Yes; she was, but—"
"As for my son," said Mrs. Richie, "he is not at home; but I assure you,"—she stumbled a little over this; "I assure you that if he were he would have no desire to see your wife."
Blair was silent. Then he said, in a smothered voice: "If she is at your house, tell her I won't keep the money. I'll make Nannie build a hospital with it; or I'll … tell her, if she will only just come back to me, I'll—" He could not go on.
"Blair," Robert Ferguson said, from the doorway, "it is light enough now to get a boat."
Blair nodded. "If she has gone to you, if she is alive," he said, "tell her I'll give him the money."
Helena Richie lifted her head with involuntary hauteur. "My son has no interest in your money!"
"Oh," he said, brokenly, "you can't seem to think of anything but his quarrel with me. Somehow, all that seems so unimportant now! Why, I'd ask David to help me, if I could reach him." He did not see her relenting, outstretched hand; for the first time in a life starved for want of the actualities of pain, Blair was suffering; he forgot embarrassment, he even forgot hatred; he touched fundamentals: the need of help and the instinctive reliance upon friendship. "David would help me!" he said, passionately; "or my mother would know what to do; but you people—" He dashed after Mr. Ferguson, and a moment later Mrs. Richie heard the carriage rattling down the street; the two men were going to the river to begin their heart-sickening search.
It was then that she started upon a search of her own. She made a somewhat lame excuse to Nannie—Nannie was the last person to be intrusted with Helena Richie's fears! Then she took the morning express across the mountains. She sat all day in fierce alternations of hope and angry concern: Surely Elizabeth was alive; but suppose she was alive—with David! David's mother, remembering what he had said to her that Sunday afternoon on the beach, knew, in the bottom of her heart, that she would rather have Elizabeth dead than alive under such conditions. Her old misgivings began to press upon her: the conditions might have held no danger for him if he had had a different mother! She found herself remembering, with anguish, a question that had been asked her very long ago, when David was a little boy: Canyoumake him brave; canyoumake him honorable; canyou—"I've tried, oh, I have tried," she said; "but perhaps Dr. Lavendar ought not to have given him to me!" It was an unendurable idea; she drove it out of her mind, and sat looking at the mist-enfolded mountains, struggling to decide between a hope that implied a fear and a fear that destroyed a hope;—but every now and then, under both the hope and the fear, came a pang of memory that sent the color into her face: Robert Ferguson's library; his words; his kiss….
As the afternoon darkened into dusk, through sheer fatigue she relaxed into certainty that both the hope and the fear were baseless: Elizabeth had not gone to David; she couldn't have done such an insane thing! David's mother began to be sorry she had suggested to Blair that his wife might be in Philadelphia. She began to wish she had stayed in Mercer, and not left them all to their cruel anxiety. "If she has done what they think, I'll go back to-morrow. Robert will need me, and David would want me to go back." It occurred to her, with a lift of joy, that she might possibly find David at home. Owing to the bad weather, he might not have gone down to the beach to close the cottage as he had written her he meant to do. She wondered how he would take this news about Elizabeth. For a moment she almost hoped he would not be at home, so that she need not tell him. "Oh," she said to herself, "when will he get over her cruelty to him?" As she gathered up her wraps to leave the car, she wondered whether human creatures ever did quite "get over" the catastrophes of life. "Have I? And I am fifty,—and it was twenty years ago!"
When with a lurch the cab drew up against the curb, her glance at the unlighted windows of her parlor made her sigh with relief; there was nobody there! Yes; she had certainly been foolish to rush off across the mountains, and leave those poor, distressed people in Mercer.
"The doctor is at Little Beach, I suppose?" she said to the woman who answered her ring; "By-the-way, Mary, no one has been here to-day? No lady to see me?"
"There was a lady to see the doctor; she was just possessed to see him. I told her he was down at the beach, and she was that upset," Mary said, smiling, "you'd 'a' thought there wasn't another doctor in Philadelphia!" Patients were still enough of a rarity to interest the whole friendly household.
"Who was she? What was she like? Did she give her name?" Mrs. Richie was breathless; the servant was startled at the change in her; fear, like a tangible thing, leaped upon her and shook her.
"Who was she?" Mrs. Richie said, fiercely.
The surprised woman, giving the details of that early call, was, of course, ignorant of the lady's name; but after the first word or two David's mother knew it. "Bring me a time-table. Never mind my supper! I must see the lady. I think I know who she was. She wanted to see me, and I must find her. I know where she has gone. Hurry! Where is the new time-table?"
"She didn't ask for you, 'm," the bewildered maid assured her.
Mrs. Richie was not listening; she was turning the leaves of thePathfinderwith trembling fingers; the trains had been changed on the little branch road, but somehow she must get there,—"to-night!"she said to herself. To find a train to Normans was an immense relief, though it involved a fourteen-mile drive to Little Beach. She could not reach them ("them!" she was sure of it now), she could not reach them until nearly twelve, but she would be able to say that Elizabeth had spent the night with her.
The hour before the train started for Normans seemed endless to HelenaRichie. She sent a despatch to Blair to say:
"I have found her. Do not come for her yet. This is imperative. Will telegraph you to-morrow."
After that she walked about, up and down, sometimes stopping to look out of the window into the rainswept street, sometimes pausing to pick up a book but though she turned over the pages, she did not know what she read. She debated constantly whether she had done well to telegraph Blair. Suppose, in spite of her command, he should rush right on to Philadelphia, "then what!" she said to herself, frantically. If he found that Elizabeth had followed David down to the cottage, what would he do? There would be a scandal! And it was not David's fault—she had followed him; how like her to follow him, careless of everything but her own whim of the moment! She would have recalled the despatch if she could have done so. "If Robert were only here to tell me what to do!" she thought, realizing, even in her cruel alarm, how greatly she depended on him. Suddenly she must have realized something else, for a startled look came into her eyes. "No! of course I'm not," she said; but the color rose in her face. The revelation was only for an instant; the next moment she was tense with anxiety and counting the minutes before she could start for the station.
It was a great relief when she found herself at last on the little local train, rattling out into the rainy night. When she reached Normans it was not easy to get a carriage to go to Little Beach. No depot hack-driver would consider such a drive on such a night. She found her way through the rainy streets to a livery-stable, and standing in the doorway of a little office that smelled of harnesses and horses, she bargained with a reluctant man, who, though polite enough to take his feet from his desk and stand up before a lady, told her point-blank that there wasn't no money, no, nor no woman, that he'd drive twenty-eight miles for—down to the beach and back; on no such night as this; "but maybe one of my men might, if you'd make it worth his while," he said, doubtfully.
"I will make it worth his while," Mrs. Richie said.
"There's a sort of inlet between us and the beach, kind of a river, like; you'll have to ferry over," the man warned her.
"Please get the carriage at once," she said.
So the long drive began. It was very dark. At times the rain sheeted down so that little streams of water dripped upon her from the top of the carryall, and the side curtains flapped so furiously that she could scarcely hear the driver grumbling that if he'd 'a' knowed what kind of a night it was he wouldn't have undertook the job.
"I'll pay you double your price," she said in a lull of the storm; and after that there was only the sheeting rain and the tugging splash of mud-loaded fetlocks. At the ferry there was a long delay. "The ferry-man's asleep, I guess," the driver told her; certainly there was no light in the little weather-beaten house on the riverbank. The man clambered out from under the streaming rubber apron of the carryall, and handing the wet reins back to her to hold—"that horse takes a notion to run sometimes," he said, casually; made his way to the ferry-house. "Come out!" he said, pounding on the door; "tend to your business! there's a lady wants to cross!"
The ferry-man had his opinion of ladies who wanted to do such things in such weather; but he came, after what seemed to the shivering passenger an interminable time, and the carryall was driven onto the flat-bottomed boat. A minute later the creak of the cable and the slow rock of the carriage told her they had started. It was too dark to see anything, but she could hear the sibilant slap of the water against the side of the scow and the brush of rain on the river. Once the dripping horse shook himself, and the harness rattled and the old hack quivered on its sagging springs. She realized that she was cold; she could hear the driver and the ferryman talking; there was the blue spurt of a match, and a whiff of very bad tobacco from a pipe. Then a dash of rain blew in her face, and the smell of the pipe was washed out of the air.
It was after twelve when, stumbling up the path to her own house, she leaned against the door awaiting David's answer to her knock; when he opened it to the gust of wet wind and her drawn, white face, he was stunned with astonishment. He never knew what answer he made to those first broken, frantic words; as for her, she did not wait to hear his answer. She ran past him and burst into the fire-lit silence that was still tingling with emotion. She saw Elizabeth rising, panic-stricken, from her chair. Clutching her shoulder, she looked hard into the younger woman's face; then, with a great sigh, she sank down into a chair.
"Thank God!" she said, faintly.
David, following her, stammered out, "How did you get here?" The full, hot torrent of passion of only a moment before had come to a crashing standstill. He could hardly breathe with the suddenness of it. His thoughts galloped. He heard his own voice as if it had been somebody else's, and he was conscious of his foolishness in asking his question; what difference did it make how she got here! Besides, he knew how: she had come over the mountains that day, taken the evening train for Normans, and driven down here, fourteen miles—in this storm! "You must be worn out," he said, involuntarily.
"I am in time; nothing else matters. David, go and pay the man. Here is my purse."
He glanced at Elizabeth, hesitated, and went. The two women, alone, looked at each other for a speechless instant.
[Illustration: CLUTCHING HER SHOULDER, SHE LOOKED HARD INTO THE YOUNGERWOMAN'S FACE]
"You ought not to be here, you know," Helena Richie said, in a low voice.
Elizabeth was silent.
"They are all very much frightened about you at home."
"I am sorry they are frightened."
"Your coming might be misunderstood," David's mother said; her voice was very harsh; the gentle loveliness of her face had changed to an incredible harshness. "I shall say I was here with you, of course; but you are insane, Elizabeth! you are insane to be here!"
"Mother," David said, quietly, "you mustn't find fault with Elizabeth." He had come back, and even as he spoke retreating wheels were heard. They were alone, these three; there was no world to any of them outside that fire-lit room, encompassed by night, the ocean, and the storm. "Elizabeth did exactly right to come down here to—to consult me," David said; "but we won't talk about it now; it's too late, and you are too tired."
Then turning to Elizabeth, he took her hand. "Won't you go up-stairs now? You are as tired as Materna! But she must have something to eat before she goes to bed." Still holding her hand, he opened the door for her. "You know the spare room? I'm afraid it's rather in disorder, but you will find some blankets and things in the closet."
Elizabeth hesitated; then obeyed him.
David was entirely self-possessed by this time; in that moment while he stood in the rain, counting out the money from his mother's purse for the driver, and telling the man of a short cut across the dunes, the emotion of a moment before cooled into grim alertness to meet the emergency:there must be no scene. To avoid the possibility of such a thing, he must get Elizabeth out of the room at once. As he slipped the bolt on the front door and hurried back to the living room, he said a single short word between his teeth. But he was not angry; he was only irritated—as one might be irritated at a good child whose ignorant innocence led it into meddling with matters beyond its comprehension. And he was not apprehensive; his mother's coming could not alter anything; it was merely an embarrassment and distress. What on earth should he do with her the next morning! "I'll have to lie to her," he thought, in consternation. David had never lied to his mother, and even in this self-absorbed moment he shrank from doing so. He was keenly disturbed, but as the door closed upon Elizabeth he spoke quietly enough: "You are very tired, Materna; don't let's get to discussing things tonight. I'll bring you something to eat, and then you must go up to your room."
"There is nothing to discuss, David," she said; "of course Elizabeth ought not to have come down here to you. But I am here. To-morrow she will go home with me."
She had taken off her bonnet, and with one unsteady hand she brushed back the tendrils of her soft hair that the rain had tightened into curls all about her temples; the glow in her cheeks from the cold air was beginning to die out, and he saw, suddenly, the suffering in her eyes. But for the first time in his life David Richie was indifferent to pain in his mother's face; that calm declaration that Elizabeth would go home with her, brushed the habit of tenderness aside and stung him into argument—which a moment later he regretted. "You say she'll 'go home.' Do you mean that you will take her back to Blair Maitland?"
"I hope she will go to her husband."
"Why?" He was standing before her, his shoulder against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets; his attitude was careless, but his face was alert and hard; she no longer seemed a meddlesome good child; she was his mother, interfering in what was not her business. "Why?" he repeated.
"Because he is her husband," Helena Richie said.
"You know how he became her husband; he took advantage of an insane moment. The marriage has ended."
"Marriage can't end, David. Living together may end; but Blair is not unkind to Elizabeth; he is not unfaithful; he is not unloving—"
"No, my God! he is not. My poor Elizabeth!"
His mother, looking at the suddenly convulsed face before her, knew that it was useless to pretend that this was only a matter of preserving appearances by her presence. "David," she said, "what do you mean by that?"
"I mean that she has done with that thief." As he spoke it flashed into his mind that perhaps it was best to have things out with her now; then in the morning he would arrange it, somehow, so that she and Elizabeth should not meet;—for Elizabeth must not hear talk like this. Not that he was afraid of its effect; certainly this soft, sweet mother of his could not do what he had declared neither Blair Maitland, nor death, nor God himself could accomplish! But her words would make Elizabeth uncomfortable; so he had better tell her now, and get it over. In the midst of his own discomfort, he realized that this would spare him the necessity of a lie the next morning; and he was conscious of relief at that. "Mother," he said, gently, "I was going to write to you about it, but perhaps I had better tell you now…. She is coming to me."
"Coming to you!"
He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his; the terror in her face made him wince. For a moment he wished he had not undertaken to tell her; a letter would have been better. On paper, he could have reasoned it out calmly; now, her quivering face distressed him so that he hardly knew what he said.
"Materna, I am awfully sorry to pain you! I do wish you would realize that thingshaveto be this way."
"What way?"
"She and I have to be together," he said, simply. "She belongs to me. When I keep her from going back to Blair I merely keep my own. Mother, can't you understand? there is something higher than man's law, which ties a woman to a man she hates; there is God's law, which gives her to the man she loves! Oh, I am sorry you came to-night! To-morrow I would have written to you. You don't know how distressed I am to pain you, but—poor mother!"
She had sunk back in her chair with a blanched face. She said, faintly, "David!"
"Don't let's talk about it, Materna," he said, pitifully. He could not bear to look at her; it seemed as if she had grown suddenly old; she was broken, haggard, with appalled eyes and trembling lips. "You don't understand," David said, greatly distressed.
Helena Richie put her hands over her face. "Don't I?" she said. There was a long pause; he took her hand and stroked it gently; but in spite of tenderness for her he was thinking of that other hand, young and thrilling to his own, which he had held an hour before; his lips stung at the memory of it; he almost forgot his mother, cowering in her chair. Suddenly she spoke:
"Well, David, what do you propose to do? After you have seduced another man's wife and branded Elizabeth with a—a dreadful name—"
His pity broke like a bubble; he struck the arm of his chair with a clenched hand. "You must not use such words to me! I will not listen to words that soil your lips and my ears! Will you leave this room or shall I?"
"Answer my question first: what do you mean to do after you have takenElizabeth?"
"I shall marry her, of course. He will divorce her, and we shall be married." He was trembling with indignation: "I will not submit to this questioning," he said. He got up and opened the door. "Will you leave me, please?" he said, frigidly.
But she did not rise. She was bending forward, her hands gripped between her knees. Then, slowly, she raised her bowed head and there was authority in her face. "Wait. You must listen. You owe it to me to listen."
He hesitated. "I owe it to myself not to listen to such words as you used a moment ago." He was standing before her, his arms folded across his breast; there was no son's hand put out now to touch hers.
"I won't repeat them," she said, "although I don't know any others that can be used when a man takes another man's wife, or when a married woman goes away with a man who is not her husband."
"You drag me into an abominable position in making me even defend myself. But I will defend myself. I will explain to you that, as things are, Elizabeth cannot get a divorce from Blair Maitland. But if she leaves him for me, he will divorce her; and we can marry."
"Perhaps he will not divorce her."
"You mean out of revenge? I doubt if even he could be such a brute as that."
"There have been such brutes."
"Very well; then we will do without his divorce! We will do without the respectability that you think so much of."
"Nobody can do without it very long," she said, mildly. "But we won't argue about respectability; and I won't even ask you whether you will marry her, if she gets her divorce."
His indignation paused in sheer amazement. "No," he said. "I should hardly think that even you would venture to ask me such a question!"
"I will only ask you, my son, if you have thought how you would smirch her name by such a process of getting possession of her?"
"Oh," he said, despairingly, "what is the use of talking about it? I can't make you understand!"
"Have you considered that you will ruin Elizabeth?" she insisted.
"You may call happiness 'ruin,' if you want to, mother. We don't—she and I."
"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I told you it wouldn't be happiness?"
Her question was too absurd to answer. Besides, he was determined not to argue with her; argument would only prolong this futile and distressing interview. So, holding in the leash of respect for her, contempt for her opinions, he listened with strained and silent patience to what she had to say of duty and endurance. It all belonged, he thought, to her generation and to her austere goodness; but from his point of view it was childish. When at last he spoke, in answer to an insistent question as to whether Elizabeth realized how society would regard her course, his voice as well as his words showed his entire indifference to her whole argument. "Yes," he said; "I have pointed out to Elizabeth the fact that though our course will be in accordance with a Law that is infinitely higher than the laws that you think so much of, there will be, as you say, people to throw mud at her."
"A 'higher law,'" she said, slowly. "I have heard of the 'higher law,'David."
"That Elizabeth will obey it for me, that she is willing to expose herself to the contempt of little minds, makes me adore her! And I am willing, I love her enough, to accept her sacrifice—"
"Though you did not love her enough to accept the trifling matter of her money?" his mother broke in.
Sarcasm from her was so totally unexpected that for a moment he did not realize that his armor had been pierced. "God knows I believe it is for her happiness," he said; then, suddenly, his face began to burn, and in an instant he was deeply angry.
"David," she said, "you seem very sure of God; you speak His name very often. Have you really considered Him in your plan?"
He smothered an impatient exclamation; "Mother, that sort of talk means nothing to me; and apparently my reason for my course means nothing to you. I can't make you understand—"
"I don't need you to make me understand," she interrupted him; "and your reason is older than you are; I guess it is as old as human nature: You want to be happy. That is your reason, David; nothing else."
"Well, it satisfies us," he said, coldly; "I wish you wouldn't insist upon discussing it, mother, you are tired, and—"
"Yes, I am tired," she said, with a gasp. "David, if you will promise me not to speak to Elizabeth of this until you and I can talk it over quietly—"
"Elizabeth and I are going away together, to-morrow."
"You shall not do it!" she cried.
His eyes narrowed. "I must remind you," he said, "that I am not a boy. I will do what seems to me right,—right?" he interrupted himself, "why is it you can't see that it is right? Can't you realize that Elizabeth ismine?It is amazing to me that you can't see that Nature gives her to me, by a Law that is greater than any human law that was ever made!"
"The animals know that law," she said. He would not hear her: "That unspeakable scoundrel stole her; he stole her just as much as if he had drugged her and kidnapped her. Yes; I take my own!"
His voice rang through the house; Elizabeth, in her room, shivering with excitement, wondering what they were saying, those two—heard the jar of furious sound, and crept, trembling, halfway down-stairs.
"I take my own," he repeated, "and I will make her happy; she belongs in my arms, if, my God! we die the next day!"
"Oh," said Helena Richie, suddenly sobbing, "whatamI to do? what am I to do?" As she spoke Elizabeth entered. David's start of dismay, his quick protest, "Go back, dear; don't, don't get into this!" was dominated by his mother's cry of relief; she rose from her chair and ran to Elizabeth, holding out entreating hands. "You will not let him be so mad, Elizabeth? You will not let him be so bad?"
"Mother, for Heaven's sake, stop!" David implored her; "this is awful!"
"He is not bad," Elizabeth said, in a low voice, passing those outstretched hands without a look. All her old antagonism to an untempted nature seemed to leap into her face. "I heard you talking, and I came down. I could not let you reproach David."
"Haven't I the right to reproach him?—to save him from dishonoring himself as well as you?"
"You must not use that word!" Elizabeth cried out, trembling all over."David is not dishonorable."
"Not dishonorable! Do you say there is nothing dishonorable in taking the wife of another man?"
"Elizabeth," David said, quietly, putting his arm around her, "my mother is very excited. We are not going to talk any more to-night. Do go up-stairs, dear." His one thought was to get her out of the room; it had been dreadful enough to struggle with his mother alone—power and passion and youth, against terror and weakness. But to struggle in Elizabeth's presence would be shocking. Not, he assured himself, that he had the slightest misgiving as to the effect upon her of the arguments to which he had been obliged to listen, but. . .
"Do leave us, dearest," he said, in a low voice; the misgiving which he denied had driven the color out of his face.
His mother raised her hand with abrupt command: "No, Elizabeth must hear what I have to say." She heard it unmoved; the entreaty not to wound her uncle's love, and hurt Nannie's pride, and betray old Miss White's trust, did not touch her. All she said was, "I am sorry; but I can't help it. David wants me."
Then Helena Richie turned again to her son. "How do you mean to support your mistress, David? Of course the scandal will end your career."
Instantly Elizabeth quivered; the apprehension in her eyes made his words stumble: "There—there are other things than my profession. I am not afraid that I cannot support mywife."
But that flicker of alarm in Elizabeth's eyes had caught Helena Richie's attention. "Why, Elizabeth," she said, in an astonished voice. "You love him!" Then she added, simply: "Forgive me." Her words were without meaning to the other two, but they brought a burst of hope into her entreaty: "Then you won't ruin him! I know you won't ruin my boy—if you love him."
Elizabeth flinched: "David! I told you—that is what I—"
He caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth. "Darling, she doesn't understand."
"Idounderstand!" his mother said. She paused for a breathless moment, and stood gripping the table, looking with dilating eyes and these two, who, loving each other, were yet preparing to murder Love. "I thank God," she said, and the elation in her face was almost joy; "I thank God, Elizabeth, that I understand the disgrace such wickedness will bring! No honest man will trust him; no decent woman will respect you! And listen, Elizabeth: evenyouwill not really trust him; and he will never entirely respect you!"
Elizabeth slowly drew her hand from David's—and instantly he knew that she was frightened. What! Was he to lose her again? He shook with rage. When under that panic storm of words, that menace of distrust and disgrace, Elizabeth, in an agony of uncertainty, hid her face in her hands, David could have killed the robber who was trying to tear her from him. He burst into denunciation of the littleness which could regard their course in any other way than he did himself. He had no pity because his assailant was his mother. He gave no quarter because she was a woman; she was an enemy! an enemy who had stolen in out of the night to rob him of his lately won treasure. "Don't listen to her," he ended, hoarsely; "she doesn't know what she is talking about!"
"But, David, that was what I said. I said it would be bad for you; she says it will ruin you—"
"It is a lie!" he said.
It was nearly three o'clock. They were all at the breaking-point of anger and terror.
"Elizabeth," Helena Richie implored, "if you love him, are you willing to destroy him? You could not bear to have me, his mother, speak of his dishonor; how about letting the world speak of it—if you love him?"
"David," Elizabeth said again, her shaking hands on his arm; "you hear what she says? Perhaps she is right. Oh, I think she is right! What shall I do?"
The entreaty was the entreaty of a child, a frightened, bewildered child. Helena Richie caught her breath; for a single strange moment she forgot her agony of fear for her son; the woman in her was stronger than the mother in her; some obscure impulse ranged her with this girl, as if against a common enemy. "My dear, my dear!" she said, "he shall not have you. I will save you."