Book: The Iron Woman

M >> Margaret Deland >> The Iron Woman




She lifted the parasol again, and looked full at him; the white
shadow of the silk made the dark amber of her unsmiling eyes
singularly luminous. "No," she said; "your mother did not change
her mind. Nannie thought she did, but it was not so." She spoke
with stern certainty. "Your mother didn't mean you to have that
money. She meant it for--a hospital."

Blair stopped rowing and leaned on his oars. "Why don't you speak
his name?" he said, between his teeth.

The parasol fell back on her shoulder; she grew very white; the
hard line that used to be a dimple was like a gash in her cheek;
she looked suddenly old. "I will certainly speak his name:
_David Richie_. Your mother meant the money for David
Richie."

"That," said Blair, "is a matter of opinion. You think she did. I
think she didn't. I think she meant it for the person whose name
she wrote on the certificate. That person will keep it."

Elizabeth was silent. Blair began to row again, softly. The anger
in his face died out and left misery behind it. Oh, how she hated
him; and how she loved--_him_. At that moment Blair hated
David as one only hates the human creature one has injured. They
did not speak again for the rest of the slow drift down to
Willis's. Once Blair opened his lips to bid her notice that the
overhanging willows and chestnuts mirrored themselves so clearly
in the water that the skiff seemed to cut through autumnal
foliage, and the sound of the ripple at the prow was like the
rustle of leaves; but the preoccupation in her face silenced him.
It was after four when, brushing past a fringe of willows, the
skiff bumped softly against a float half hidden in the yellowing
sedge and grass at Willis's landing. Blair got out, and drawing
the boat alongside, held up his hand to his wife, but she ignored
his assistance. As she sprang lightly out, the float rocked a
little and the water splashed over the planks. There was a dank
smell of wet wood and rankly growing water-weeds. A ray of
sunshine, piercing the roof of willow leaves, struck the single
blossom of a monkey-flower, that sparkled suddenly in the green
darkness like a topaz.

"Elizabeth," Blair said in a low voice--he was holding the
gunwale of the boat and he did not look at her; "Elizabeth, all I
want money for is to give you everything you want." She was
silent. He made the skiff fast and followed her up the path to
the little inn on the bank. There were some tables out under the
locust-trees, and a welcoming landlord came hurrying to meet them
with suggestions of refreshments.

"What will you have?" Blair asked.

"Anything--nothing; I don't care," Elizabeth said; and Blair gave
an order he thought would please her.

Below them the river, catching the sunset light, blossomed with a
thousand stars. Elizabeth watched the dancing glitter absently;
when Blair, forgetting for a moment the depression of the last
half-hour, said impulsively, "Oh, how beautiful that is!" she
nodded, and came out of her abstraction to call his attention to
the reflected gold of a great chestnut on the other side of the
stream.

"Are you warm enough?" he asked. He said to himself, with a sigh
of relief, that evidently she had dropped the dangerous subject
of the hospital. "There is a chill in these October evenings as
the sun goes down," he reminded her.

"Yes."

"Elizabeth," he burst out, "why can't we talk sometimes? Haven't
we anything in common? Can't we ever talk, like ordinary husbands
and wives? You would show more civility to a beggar!" But as he
spoke the waiter pushed his tray between them, and she did not
answer. When Blair poured out a glass of wine for her she shook
her head.

"I don't want anything."

He looked at her in despair: "I love you. I suppose you wouldn't
believe me if I should try to tell you how I love you--and yet
you don't give me a decent word once a month!"

"Blair," she said, quietly, "that is final, is it--about the
money? You are going to keep it?"

"I am certainly going to keep it."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "It is final," she repeated, slowly.

"You are angry," he cried, "because I won't give the money my
mother gave me, all the money I have in the world, to the man
whom you threw off like an old glove!"

"No," she said, slowly, "I don't _think_ I am angry. But it
seems somehow to be more than I can bear; a sort of last straw, I
suppose," she said, smiling faintly. "But I'm not angry, I
think. Still, perhaps I am. I don't really know."

Blair struck a match under the table. His hand holding his
cigarette trembled. "To the best of my knowledge and belief,
Elizabeth, I am honest. I believe my mother meant me to have that
money. She did not mean to have it go to--to a hospital."


Elizabeth dug the ferrule of her parasol into the gravel at her
feet. "It is David's money. You took his wife. Now you are taking
his money. . . . You can't keep both of them." She said this very
gently, so gently that for a moment he did not grasp the sense of
her words. When he did it seemed to him that she did not herself
realize what she had said, for immediately, in the same calmly
matter-of-fact way, she began to speak of unimportant things: the
river was very low, wasn't it? What a pity they were cutting the
trees on the opposite hill. "They are burning the brush," she
said; "do you smell the smoke? I love the smell of burning brush
in October." She was simpler and pleasanter than she had been for
a long time. But he could not know that it was because she felt,
inarticulately, that her burden had been lifted; she herself
could not have said why, but she was almost happy. Blair was
confused to the point of silence by her abrupt return to the
commonplace. He glanced at her with furtive anxiety. "Oh, see the
moon!" Elizabeth said, and for a moment they watched the great
disk of the Hunter's moon rising in the translucent dusk behind
the hills.

"That purple haze in the east is like the bloom on a plum," Blair
said.

"I think we had better go now," Elizabeth said, rising. But
though she had seemed so friendly, she did not even turn her head
to see if he were following her, and he had to hurry to overtake
her as she went down the path to the half-sunken float that was
rocking slightly in the grassy shallows. As he knelt, steadying
the boat with one hand, he held the other up to her, and this
time she did not repulse him; but when she put her hand into his,
he kissed it with abrupt, unhappy passion,--and she drew it from
him sharply. When she took her place in the stern and lifted the
tiller-ropes she looked at him, gathering up his oars, with
curious gentleness. . . .

She was sorry for him, for he seemed to care so much;--and this
was the end! She had tried to bear her life. Nobody could imagine
how hard she had tried; life had been her punishment, so with all
her soul and all her body, she had tried to bear it! But this was
the end. It was not possible to try any more. "I have borne it as
long as I can," she thought. Yet as she had said, she was not
angry. She wondered, vaguely, listening to the dip of the oars,
at this absence of anger. She had been able to talk about the
bonfires, and she had thought the moon beautiful. No; she was not
angry. Or if she were, then her anger was unlike all the other
angers that had scourged and torn the surface of her life; they
had been storms, all clamor and confusion and blinding flashes,
with more or less indifference to resulting ruin. But this anger,
which could not be recognized as anger, was a noiseless cataclysm
in the very center of her being; a tidal wave, that was lifting
and lifting, moving slowly, too full for sound, in the resistless
advance of an absorbing purpose of ruin. "I am not angry," she
said to herself; "but I think I am dying."

The pallor of her face frightened Blair, who was straining at his
oars against the current: "Elizabeth! What is the matter? Shall I
stop? Shall we go ashore? You are ill!"

"No; I'm not. Go on, please."

"But there is something the matter!"

She shook her head. "Don't stop. We've gone ever so far down-
stream, just in this minute."

Blair looked at her anxiously. A little later he tried to make
her talk; asked her how she felt, and called her attention to the
bank of clouds that was slowly climbing up the sky. But she was
silent. As usual, she seemed to have nothing to say to him. He
rowed steadily, in long, beautiful strokes, and she sat watching
the dark water lap and glimmer past the side of the skiff. As
they worked up-stream, the sheen of oil began to show again in
faint and rocking iridescence; once she leaned over and touched
the water with her fingers; then looked at them with a frown.

"Look out!" Blair said; "trim a little, will you?"

She sat up quickly: "I wonder if it is easy to drown?"

"Mighty easy--if you lean too hard on the gunwale," he said,
good-naturedly.

"Does it take very long?"

"To drown? I never tried it, but I believe not; though I
understand that it's unpleasant while it lasts." He watched her
wistfully; if he could only make her smile!

"I suppose dying is generally unpleasant," she said, and glanced
down into the black oily water with a shiver.

It was quite dark by this time, and Blair was keeping close to
the shore to avoid the current narrowing between the piers of the
old bridge. When they reached Mrs. Todd's wharf Elizabeth was
still staring into the water.

"It is so black here, so dirty! I wouldn't like to have it touch
me. It's cleaner down at Willis's," she said, thoughtfully.
Blair, making fast at the landing, agreed: "Yes, if I wanted a
watery grave I'd prefer the river at Willis's to this." Then he
offered her a pleading hand; but she sat looking at the water.
"How clean the ocean is, compared to a river," she said; then
noticed his hand. She took it calmly enough, and stepped out of
the boat. She had forgotten, he thought, her displeasure about
the money; there was only the usual detachment. When he said it
was too early to go to Nannie's,--"it isn't seven yet, and Mrs.
Richie won't leave the house until a quarter past;" she agreed
that they had better go to the hotel.

"What do you say to the theater to-night?" he asked. But she
shook her head.

"You go; I would rather be alone."

"I hear there's a good play in town?"

She was silent.

Blair said something under his breath with angry hopelessness.
This was always the way so far as any personal relation between
them went; she did not seem to see him; she did not even hear
what he was saying. "You always want to be alone, so far as I am
concerned," he said. She made no answer. After dinner he took
himself off. "She doesn't want me round, so I'll clear out," he
said, sullenly; he had not the heart even to go to Nannie's.
"I'll drop into the theater, or perhaps I'll just walk," he
thought, drearily. He wandered out into the street, but the sky
had clouded over and there was a soft drizzle of rain, so he
turned into the first glaring entrance that yawned at him from
the pavement.




CHAPTER XXXV

When Blair came home, a little after eleven, she had gone.

At first he did not grasp the significance of her absence. He
called to her from their parlor: "I want to tell you about the
play; perfect trash!" No answer. He glanced through the open door
of her bedroom; not there. He hurried to his own room, crying:
"Elizabeth! Where are you?" Then stood blankly waiting. Had she
gone down-stairs? He went out into the hall and, leaning over the
banisters, listened to the stillness--that unhuman stillness of a
hotel corridor; but there was no bang of an iron door, no
clanking rumble of an ascending elevator. Had she gone out? He
looked at his watch, and his heart came up into his throat; out--
at this hour! But perhaps after he had left her, she had suddenly
decided to spend the night at her uncle's or Nannie's. In that
case she would have left word in the office. He was thrusting his
arms into his overcoat and settling his hat on his head, even
while he was dashing downstairs to inquire:

"Has Mrs. Maitland left any message for me?"

The clerk looked vague: "We didn't see her go out, sir. But I
suppose she went by the ladies' entrance. No; she didn't leave
any message, sir."

Blair suddenly knew that he was frightened. He could not have
said why. Certainly he was not conscious of any reason for
fright; but some blind instinct sent a wave of alarm all through
him. His knees felt cold; there was a sinking sensation just
below his breast-bone.

"What an ass I am!" he said to himself; "she has gone to her
uncle's, of course." He said something of the kind, with
elaborate carelessness, to the clerk; "if she comes back before I
do, just say I have gone out on an errand." He was frightened,
but not to the extent of letting that inquisitive idiot behind
the counter know it. "If he had been attending to his business,"
he thought, angrily, "he would have seen her go, and he could
have told me when it was. I'll go to Mr. Ferguson's. Of course
she's there."

He stood on the curb-stone for a minute, looking for a carriage;
but the street was deserted. He could not take the time to go to
the livery-stable. He started hurriedly; once he broke into a
run, then checked himself with the reminder that he was a fool.
As he drew near her uncle's house, he began to defend himself
against disappointment: "She's at Nannie's. Why did I waste time
coming here? I know she is at Nannie's!"

Robert Ferguson's house was dark, except for streaks of light
under the blinds of the library windows. Blair, springing up the
front steps, rang; then held his breath to listen for some one
coming through the hall; his heart seemed smothering in his
throat. "I _know_ she isn't here; she's at Nannie's," he
told himself. He was acutely conscious of the dank smell of the
frosted honeysuckle clinging limply to the old iron trellis that
inclosed the veranda; but when the door opened he was casual
enough--except for a slight breathlessness.

"Mr. Ferguson! is Elizabeth here?"

"No," Robert Ferguson said, surprised, "was she coming here?"

"She was to be here, or--or at Nannie's," Blair said, carelessly,
"I didn't know which. I'll go and get her there." His own words
reassured him, and he apologized lightly. "Sorry to have
disturbed you, sir. Good-night!" And he was gone before another
question could be asked. But out in the street he found himself
running. "Of course she's at Nannie's!" he said, panting. He even
had a twinge of anger at Elizabeth for giving him all this
trouble. "She ought to have left word," he thought, crossly. It
was a relief to be cross; nothing very serious can have happened
to a person who merely makes you cross. The faint drizzle of the
early evening had turned to rain, which added to his irritation.
"She's all right; and it's confoundedly unpleasant to get soaking
wet," he reflected. Yes; he was honestly cross. Yet in spite of
the reassurances of his mind and his temper, his body was still
frightened; he was hurrying; his breath came quickly. He dashed
on, so absorbed in denying his alarm that on one of the crossings
only a quick leap kept him from being knocked down by a carriage
full of revelers. "Here, you! Look out! What's the matter with
you?" the cab-driver yelled, pulling his horses back and
sidewise, but not before the pole of the hack had grazed Blair's
shoulder. There was a screech of laughter, a woman's vociferating
fright, a whiff of cigar smoke, and a good-natured curse: "Say,
darn you, you're too happy to be out alone, sonny!" Blair did not
hear them. Shantytown, black and silent and wet, huddled before
him; from the smokestacks of the Works banners of flame flared
out into the rain, and against them his mother's house loomed up,
dark in the darkness. At the sight of it all his panic returned,
and again he tried to discount his disappointment: "She isn't
here, of course; she has gone to the hotel. Why didn't I wait for
her there? What a fool I am!" But back in his mind, as he banged
the iron gate and rushed up the steps, he was saying: "If she
_isn't_ here--?"

The house was absolutely dark; the fan-light over the great door
was black; there was no faintest glimmer of light anywhere.
Everybody was asleep. Blair rang violently, and pounded on the
panels of the door with both hands. "Nannie! Elizabeth! Harris!--
confound the old idiot! why doesn't he answer the bell? Nannie--"

A window opened on the floor above. "What is it?" demanded a
quavering feminine voice. "Who's there?"

"Nannie! Darn it, why doesn't somebody answer the bell in this
house? Is Elizabeth--" His voice died in his throat.

"Oh, Blair! Is that you? You scared me to death," Nannie called
down. "What on earth is the matter?"

"Is--is Elizabeth here?"

"Elizabeth? No; of course not! Where is she?"

"If I knew, would I be asking you?" Blair called back furiously;
"she must be here!"

"Wait. I'll come down and let you in," Nannie said; he heard a
muffled colloquy back in the room, and then the window closed
sharply. Far off, a church clock struck one. Blair stood with a
hand on the doorknob; through the leaded side-windows he saw a
light wavering down through the house; a moment later Nannie,
lamp in hand, shivering in her thin dressing-gown, opened the
door.

"Has she been here this evening?"

"Blair! You scare me to death! No; she hasn't been here. What is
the matter? Your coat is all wet! Is it raining?"

"She isn't at the hotel, and I don't know where she is."

"Why, she's at Mr. Ferguson's, of course!"

"No, she isn't. I've been there."

"She may be at home by this time," Nannie faltered, and Blair,
assenting, was just turning to rush away, when another voice
said, with calm peremptoriness:

"What is the matter?"

Blair turned to see Mrs. Richie. She had come quietly down-
stairs, and was standing beside Nannie. Even in his scared
preoccupation, the sight of David's mother shook him. "I--I
thought," he stammered, "that you had gone home, Mrs. Richie."

"She had a little cold, and I would not let her go until to-
morrow morning," Nannie said; "you always take more cold on those
horrid sleeping-cars." Nannie had no consciousness of the
situation; she was far too alarmed to be embarrassed. Blair
cringed; he was scarlet to his temples; yet under his shame, he
had the feeling that he had when, a little boy, he clung to
David's pretty mother for protection.

"Oh, Mrs. Richie," he said, "I am so worried about Elizabeth!"

"What about her?"

"She said something this afternoon that frightened me."

"What?"

But he would not tell her. "It was nothing. Only she was very
angry; and--she will do anything when she is angry." Mrs. Richie
gave him a look, but he was too absorbed to feel its
significance. "It was something about--well, a sort of silly
threat. I didn't take it in at the time; but afterward I thought
perhaps she meant something. Really, it was nothing at all. But--
" his voice died in his throat and his eyes were terrified. There
was such pain in his face that before she knew it David's mother
was sorry for him; she even put her hand on his shoulder.

"It was just a mood," she comforted him. And Blair, taking the
white, maternal hand in both of his, looked at her speechlessly;
his chin trembled. Instantly, without words of shame on one side
or of forgiveness on the other, they were back again, these two,
in the old friendship of youth and middle age. "It was a freak,"
said Mrs. Richie, soothingly. "She is probably at the hotel by
this time. Don't be troubled, Blair. Go and see. If she isn't at
the hotel let me know at once."

"Yes, yes; I will," Blair said. "She must be there now, of
course. I know there's nothing the matter, but I don't like to
have her out so late by herself." He turned to open the front
door, fumbling with haste over the latch; Nannie called to him to
wait and she would get him an umbrella. But he did not hear her.
He was saying to himself that of course she was at the hotel; and
he was off again into the darkness!

As the door banged behind him the two women looked at each other
in dismay. "Oh, Mrs. Richie, what can be the matter?" Nannie
said.

"Just one of Elizabeth's moods. She has gone out to walk."

"At this time of night? It's after one o'clock!"

"She is probably safe and sound at the River House now."

"I wish we had one of those new telephone things," Nannie said.
"Mamma was always talking about getting one. Then Blair could let
us know as soon as he gets to the hotel." Nannie was plainly
scared; Mrs. Richie grave and a little cold. She had had, to her
amazement, a wave of tenderness for Blair; the reaction from it
came in anger at Elizabeth. Elizabeth was always making trouble!
"Poor Blair," she said, involuntarily. At the moment she was
keenly sorry for him; after all, abominable as his conduct had
been, love, of a kind, had been at the root of it. "I can forgive
love," Helena Richie said to herself, "but not hate. Elizabeth
never loved David or she couldn't have done what she did....
Nothing will happen to her," she said aloud. It occurred to this
gentle woman that nothing ever did happen to the people one felt
could be spared from this world; which wicked thought made her so
shocked at herself that she hardly heard Nannie's nervous
chatter: "If she hasn't come home, Blair will be back here in
half an hour; it takes fifteen minutes to go to the hotel and
fifteen minutes to come back. If he isn't here at a quarter to
two, everything is all right."

They went into the parlor and lit the gas; Nannie suggested a
fire, but Mrs. Richie said it wasn't worth while. "We'll be going
up-stairs in a few minutes," she said. She was not really worried
about Elizabeth; partly because of that faintly cynical belief
that nothing could happen to the poor young creature who had made
so much trouble for everybody; but also because she was
singularly self-absorbed. Those words of Robert Ferguson's, when
he kissed her in his library, had never left her mind. She
thought of them now when she and Nannie sat down in that silence
of waiting which seems to tingle with speech. The dim light from
the gas-jet by the mantelpiece did not penetrate beyond the
dividing arch of the great room; behind the grand piano sprawling
sidewise between the black marble columns, all was dark. The
shadow of the chandelier, muffled in its balloon of brown paper
muslin, made an island of darkness on the ceiling, and the four
big canvases were four black oblongs outlined in faintly
glimmering gilt.

"I remember sitting here with your mother, the night you children
were lost," Mrs. Richie said. "Oh, Nannie dear, you must move out
of this house; it is too gloomy!" But Nannie was not thinking of
the house.

"Where _can_ she have gone?" she said.

Mrs. Richie could offer no suggestion. Her explanation to herself
was that Blair and Elizabeth had quarreled, and Elizabeth, in a
paroxysm of temper, had rushed off to spend the night in some
hotel by herself. But she did not want to say this to Nannie. To
herself she said that things did sometimes turn out for the best
in this world, after all--if only David could realize it! "She
would have made him dreadfully unhappy," Helena Richie thought;
"she doesn't know what love means." But alas! David did not know
that he had had an escape. She sighed, remembering that talk on
the beach, and those wicked things he had said,--things for which
she must be in some way to blame. "If he had had a different
mother," she thought, heavily, "he might not have--" A sudden
shock of terror jarred all through her--_could Elizabeth have
gone to David?_ The very thought turned her cold; it was as if
some slimy, poisonous thing had touched her. Then common sense
came in a wave of relief: "Of course not! Why should she do such
an absurd thing?" But in spite of common sense, Helena Richie's
lips went dry.

"It's a quarter to two," Nannie said. "He hasn't come; she must
be at the hotel."

"I'm sure she is," Mrs. Richie agreed.

"Let's wait five minutes," Nannie said; "but I'm certain it's all
right."

"Of course it's all right," Mrs. Richie said again, and got on
her feet with a shiver of relief.

"It gave me a terrible scare," Nannie confessed, and turned out
the gas. "I had a perfectly awful thought, Mrs. Richie; a wicked
thought. I was afraid she had--had done something to herself. You
know she is so crazy when she is angry, and--"

The front gate banged. Nannie gave a faint scream. "Oh, Mrs.
Richie! Oh--"

It was Helena Richie who opened the door before Blair had even
reached it. "Well? Well?"

"Not there. . . ."




CHAPTER XXXVI

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.

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