Book: The Iron Woman

M >> Margaret Deland >> The Iron Woman




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 of
_that_ to 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 made _fun_ of
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 was _crazy!_ 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; "_you_ must 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't_ take things so for granted, dear; and don't be so
awfully sensible, David."




CHAPTER XIV

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, and I'm in a hurry. Just take these letters and sign them
'S. Maitland per N. 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, _poor_ Mamma!" 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, _I_
shall 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 is _legal_ enough, 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'm_ damn-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.

"_I_ would give all I have in the world!" he said.

"Well," his mother said, ramming her grimy handkerchief into her
pocket, "if it cost all _you_ have 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 of _The 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!"

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