Book: The Iron Woman

M >> Margaret Deland >> The Iron Woman




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
YOUNGER WOMAN'S FACE]




CHAPTER XXXIX

"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 things _have_ to 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
taken Elizabeth?"

"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 is _mine?_ 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, "what _am_ I 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 my
_wife_."

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."

"I _do_ understand!" 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: even _you_ will 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."

But Elizabeth was not listening. "David, if I should injure you"--

"You will ruin him," his mother repeated.

David gave her a deadly look. "You will kill me, Elizabeth,
unless you come to me," he said, roughly. "Do you want to rob me
again?--You've done it once," he reminded her; love made him
brutal.

There was a moment of silence. The eyes of the mother and son
crossed like swords. Elizabeth, standing between them, shivered;
then slowly she turned to David, and held out her hands, her open
palms falling at her sides with a gesture of complete and pitiful
surrender. "Very well, David. I won't do it again. I won't hurt
you again. I will do whatever you tell me."

David caught her in his arms. His mother trembled with despair;
the absolute immovability of these two was awful!

"Elizabeth, he is selfish and wicked! David, have you no manhood?
Shame on you!" Contempt seemed her last resource; it did not
touch him. "Wait two days," she implored him; "one day, even--"

"I told you we are going to-morrow," he said. He was urging
Elizabeth gently from the room, but at his mother's voice she
paused.

"Suppose," Helena Richie was saying--"suppose that Blair does not
give you a divorce?"

Elizabeth looked into David's eyes silently.

"And," his mother said, "when David gets tired of you--what
then?"

"Mother!"

"Men do tire of such women, Elizabeth. What then?"

"I am not afraid of that," the girl said.

The room was very still. The two looking into each other's eyes
needed no words; the battling mother had apparently reached the
end of effort. Yet it was not the end. As she stood there a slow
illumination grew in her face--the knowledge, tragic and
triumphant, that if Love would save others, itself it cannot
save! . . . "I'm not afraid that he will tire of me," Elizabeth
had said; and David's mother, looking at him with ineffable
compassion, said, very gently:

"I was not afraid of that, once, myself."

That was all. She was standing up, clinging to the table; her
face gray, her chin shaking. They neither of them grasped the
sense of her words; then suddenly David caught his breath:

"What did you say?"

"I said--" She stopped. "Oh, my poor David, I wouldn't tell you
if I could help it; if only there was any other way! But there
isn't. I have tried, oh, I have tried every other way." She put
her hands over her face for an instant, then looked at him.
"David, I said that _I_ was not afraid, once, myself, that
_my_ lover would tire of me." There was absolute silence in
the room. "But he did, Elizabeth. He did. He did."

Then David said, "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do; you understand that a man once talked to me just as
you are talking to Elizabeth; he said he would marry me when I
got my divorce. I think he meant it--just as you mean it, now. At
any rate, I believed him. Just as Elizabeth believes you."

David Richie stepped back violently; his whole face shuddered.
"You?" he said, "my mother? No!--no!--no!"

And his mother, gathering up her strength, cringing like some
faithful dog struck across the face, pointed at him with one
shaking hand.

"Elizabeth, did you see how he looked at me? _Some day your son
will look that way at you._"




CHAPTER XL

No one spoke. The murmuring crash along the sands was suddenly
loud in their ears, but the room was still. It was the stillness
of finality; David had lost Elizabeth.

He knew it; but he could not have said why he knew it. Perhaps
none of the great decisions of passion can at the moment say
"why." Under the lash of some invisible whip, the mind leaps this
way or that without waiting for the approval of Reason. Certainly
David did not wait for it to know that all was over between him
and Elizabeth. He did not reason--he only cringed back, his eyes
hidden in his bent arm, and gasped out those words which,
scourging his mother, arraigned himself. Nor was there any reason
in Elizabeth's cry of "Oh, Mrs. Richie, I love you"; or in her
run across the room to drop upon the floor beside David's mother,
clasping her and pressing her face against the older woman's
shaking knees. "I _do_ love you--" Only in Helena Richie's
mind could there have been any sort of logic. "This," her ravaged
and exalted face seemed to say, "this was why he was given to
me." Once he had told her that her goodness had saved him; that
night her goodness had not availed. And God had used her sin!
Aloud, all that she said was:

"David, don't feel so badly. It isn't as if I were your own
mother, you know; you needn't be so un-happy, David." Her eyes
yearned over him. "You won't do it?" she said, in a breathless
whisper.

To himself he was saying: "It makes no difference! What
difference can it possibly make? Not a particle; not a particle."
Yet some deeper self must have known that the difference was
made, for at that whispered question he seemed to shake his head.
But Elizabeth, weeping, said:

"No; we won't--we won't! Dear Mrs. Richie, I love you. David!
Speak to her."

He got up with a stupid look, then his eye fell on his mother's
face. "You are worn out," he said in a dazed way, "You'll come
up-stairs now? Elizabeth, make her go up-stairs."

She was worn out; she nodded, with a sort of meek obedience, and
put out her hand to Elizabeth. David opened the door for them and
followed them up-stairs. Would his mother have this or that?
Could he do anything? Nothing, nothing. No, Elizabeth must not
stay with her, please; she would rather be alone. As he turned
away she called to him, "Elizabeth and I will take the noon
train, David."

And he said, "Yes, I will have a carriage here."

The door closed; on one side of it was the mother, exhausted
almost to unconsciousness, yet elate, remembering no more the
anguish for joy of what had been born out of it. On the other
side these two, still ignorant--as the new-born always are--of
the future to which that travail had pledged them. They stood
together in the narrow upper hall and their pitiful eyes met in
silence. Then David took her in his arms and held her for a long
moment. Then he kissed her. She whispered, "Good-by, David." But
he was speechless. He went with her to her own door, left her
without a word, and went down-stairs.

In the clamorous emptiness of the living-room he looked about
him; noticed that the table-cover was still crumpled from his
mother's hands and smoothed it automatically; then he sat down.
He had the sensation, spiritually, that a man might have
physically whose face had been violently and repeatedly slapped.
The swiftness of the confounding experiences of the last nine
hours made him actually dizzy. His thoughts rushed to one thing,
then to another. Elizabeth? No, no; he could not think of her
yet. His mother? No, he could not think of her, either. It
occurred to him that he was cold, and getting up abruptly, he
went to the fireplace, and kicked the charred sticks of driftwood
together over a graying bed of ashes. Then he heard a chair
pushed back overhead and a soft, tired step, and he wondered
vaguely if his mother's room was comfortable. Reaching for the
bellows, he knelt down and blew the reluctant embers into a faint
glow; when a hesitant flicker of flame caught the half-burned
logs he got on his feet and stood, his fingers on the
mantelpiece, his forehead on the back of his hand, watching the
fire catch and crackle into cheerful warmth. He stood there for a
long time. Suddenly his cheek grew rigid: some man, some
_beast_, had--my God! wronged Materna! It was the first
really clear thought; instantly some other thought must have
sprung up to meet it, for he said, under his breath, "No, because
I didn't mean . . . it is different with us; quite different!"
The thought, whatever it was, must have persisted, for it stung
him into restless movement. He began to walk about; once or twice
he stumbled over a footstool, that his eyes, looking blindly at
the floor, apparently did not see. Once he stood stock-still, the
blood surging in his ears, his face darkly red. But his mind was
ruthlessly clear. He was remembering; he was putting two and two
together. She was a widow; he knew that. Her marriage had been
unhappy; he knew that. There had been a man--he dimly remembered
a man. He had not thought of him for twenty years! . . . "Damn
him," David said, and the tears stood in his eyes. Then again
that thought must have come to him, for he said to himself,
violently, "But I _love_ Elizabeth, it is different with
me!" Perhaps that persistent inner voice said, "In what way?" for
he said again, "Entirely different! It is the only way to make
him divorce her so we can be married." Again he stood still and
stared blindly at the floor. That a man could live who would be
base enough to take advantage of--_Materna!_ Between rage
and pity, and confusion he almost forgot Elizabeth, until
suddenly the whirl of his thoughts was pierced by the poignant
realization that his outcry of dismay at his mother's confession
had practically told Elizabeth that he was willing to let her do
what he found unthinkable in his mother. His whole body winced
with mortification. It was the first prick of the sword of shame--
that sword of the Lord! Even while he reddened to his forehead
the sword-thrust came again in a flash of memory. It was only a
single sentence; neither argument nor entreaty nor remonstrance;
merely the statement of a fact: "_you did not love her enough
to accept her money._" At the time those ironical words were
spoken they had scarcely any meaning to him, and what meaning
they had was instantly extinguished by anger. Now abruptly they
reverberated in his ears. He forgot his mother; he forgot the
"beast," who was, after all, only the same kind of a beast that
he was himself. "You, who could not accept a girl's money could
take her good name; could urge her to a course which in your
mother overwhelms you with horror; could ask her to give you that
which ranks a man who accepted it from your mother as a 'beast.'"
David had never felt shame before; he had known mortification,
and regret, too, to a greater or less degree; and certainly he
had known remorse; he had experienced the futile rage of a man
who realizes that he has made a fool of himself; these things he
had known, as every man nearly thirty years old must know them.
Especially and cruelly he had known them when he understood the
effect of the reasoning egotism of his letter upon Elizabeth. But
the beneficent agony of shame he had never known until this
moment.

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