Book: The Iron Woman

M >> Margaret Deland >> The Iron Woman




For indeed she was radiant. The girl he had known nearly all his
life, impetuous, devoid of self-consciousness, giving her sweet,
sexless love with both generous hands, had vanished with the old
frank days of dropping an uninvited head on a boy's shoulder.
Now, though she was still impetuous, still unconscious of self,
she was glowing with womanhood, and ready to be loved. She was
not beautiful, except in so far as she was young, for youth is
always beautiful; she was tall, of a sweet and delicate thinness,
and with the faint coloring of a blush-rose; her dimple was
exquisite; her brows were straight and fine, shading eyes
wonderfully star-like, but often stormy--eyes of clear, dark
amber, which, now that David had come home, were full of dreams.

Before her joyous personality, no wonder poor inarticulate David
was torn with apprehensions! He did not share them with his
mother, who, with more or less misgiving, began to guess how
things were for herself; he knew instinctively that Mrs. Richie's
gentle, orderly mind could not possibly understand Elizabeth,
still less appreciate the peculiar charm to his inherent
reasonableness of her sweet, stormy, undisciplined temperament.
Nannie Maitland could not understand either, and yet it was to
Nannie--kind, literal little Nannie, who never understood
anything abstract, that David revealed his heart. She was
intensely sympathetic, and having long ago relinquished the
sister-in-law dream, encouraged him to rave about Elizabeth to
his heart's content; in fact, for at least a year before Mrs.
Maitland had evolved that "sensible arrangement" for her
stepdaughter, David, whenever he was at home, used to go to see
Nannie simply to pour out his hopes or his dismays. It was mostly
dismays, for it seemed to him that Elizabeth was as uncertain as
the wind! "She does--she doesn't," he used to say to himself; and
then he would question Nannie, who, having received certain
confidences from the other side, would reassure him so warmly
that he would take heart again.

At the time that he finally dared to put his fate to the touch,
Mrs. Maitland's match-making intentions for Nannie had reached a
point where she had made up her mind to put the matter through
without any more delay. "I'll speak to Mrs. Richie about it, and
get the thing settled," she said to herself; "no use dawdling
along this way!" But just the day before she found time to speak
to Mrs. Richie--it was in David's midwinter recess--something
happened.

Elizabeth had accepted--not too eagerly, of course--an invitation
to walk with him; and off they went, down Sandusky Street to the
river and across the old covered bridge. They stopped to say how
do you do to Mrs. Todd, who was peering out from behind the
scarlet geraniums in the window of the "saloon." Elizabeth took
the usual suggestive joke about a "pretty pair" with a little
hauteur, but David beamed, and as he left the room he squeezed
Mrs. Todd suddenly round her fat waist, which made her squeak but
pleased her very much. "Made for each other!" she whispered
wheezily; and David slipped a bill into her hand through sheer
joy.

"Better have some ice-cream," the old lady wheedled; "such hot
blood needs cooling."

"Oh, Mrs. Todd, _she_ is so cool, I don't need ice-cream,"
the young fellow mourned in her motherly ear.

"Get out with ye! Ain't you got eyes? She's waitin' to eat you
up,--and starvin' for ye!" And David hurried after Elizabeth, who
had reached the toll-gate and was waiting, if not to eat him, at
any rate for his company.

"She's a dear old soul!" he said joyfully.

"I believe you gave her a kiss," Elizabeth declared.

"I gave her a hug. She said things I liked!"

Elizabeth, guessing what the things might have been, swerved away
from the subject, and murmured how pretty the country looked.
There had been a snow-storm the night before, and the fields were
glistening, unbroken sheets of white; the road David chose was
followed by a brook, that ran chuckling between the agate strips
of ice along its banks; here and there a dipping branch had been
caught and was held in a tinkling crystal prison, and here and
there the ice conquered the current, and the water could be heard
gurgling and complaining under its snowy covering. David thought
that all the world was beautiful,--now that Mrs. Todd had bidden
him use his eyes!

"Remember when we used to sled down this hill, Elizabeth?"

She turned her cool, glowing face toward him and nodded. "Indeed
I do! And you used to haul my sled up to the top again."

"I don't think I have forgotten anything we did."

Instantly she veered away from personalities. "Isn't it a pity
Blair dislikes Mercer so much? Nannie is dreadfully lonely
without him."

"She has you; I don't see how she can be lonely."

"Oh, I don't count for anything compared to Blair." Her breath
carried quickly. The starry light was in her eyes, but he did not
see it. He was not daring to look at her.

"You count for everything to me," he said, in a constrained
voice.

She was silent.

"Elizabeth...do you think you could--care? a little?"

She looked away from him without a word. David trembled; "It's
all up--" he said to himself; and even as he said it, a small,
cold hand was stretched out to him,--a hand that trembled:

"David, I am not good enough. Truly, I'm not."

The very shock of having his doubts and fears crumble so
suddenly, made him stand stock-still; he turned very white.
"What!" he said, in a low voice, "You--_care_? Oh no, you
don't! You can't. I can't believe it."

Upon which Elizabeth was instantly joyous again. "Well, I won't,
if you don't want me to," she said gaily, and walked on, leaving
him standing, amazed, in the snow. Then she looked back at him
over her shoulder. At that arch and lovely look he bounded to
her, stammering something, he did not know what himself; but she
laughed, glowing and scolding, swerving over to the other side of
the path. "David! We are on a public road. Stop! Please!"

"To think of your caring," he said, almost in a whisper. His
face, with its flash of ecstasy, was like wine to her; all her
soul spoke fearlessly in her eyes: "Care? Why, David, I was only
so awfully afraid you weren't going to ask me!"

His lip trembled. He was quite speechless. But Elizabeth was
bubbling over with joy; then suddenly, her exhilaration flagged.
"What will your mother say? She doesn't like me."

"Elizabeth! she loves you! How could she help it? How could
anybody help it?"

"It's my temper," she said, sighing; "my wicked temper. Of course
I never mean anything I say, and I can't imagine why people mind;
but they do. Last week I made Cherry-pie cry. Of course she
oughtn't to have been hurt;--she knows me. You see I am really a
devil, David, to make dear, old Cherry-pie unhappy! But I don't
believe I will ever lose my temper again as long as I live. I am
going to be good, like your mother." The tears stood in her eyes.
"Mrs. Richie is so simply perfect I am sort of afraid of her. I
wish she had ever been wicked, like me. David, what shall we do
if she won't consent?"

"She'll consent all right," he said, chuckling; and added with
the sweet and trusting egotism of youth: "the only thing in the
world Materna wants, you know, is my happiness. But do you
suppose it would make any difference if she didn't consent? You
are for me," he said with an abrupt solemnity that was almost
harsh. "Nothing in the world can take you from me."

And she whispered, "Nothing."

Then David, like every lover who has ever loved, cast his
challenge into the grinning face of Fate: "This is forever,
Elizabeth."

"Forever, David."

On their way home, as they passed the toll-house, he left her and
ran up the path to tap on the window; when Mrs. Todd beamed at
him through the geraniums, "_I've got her!_" he cried. And
the gay old voice called back, "Glory be!"

On the bridge in the gathering dusk they stood for some time
without speaking, looking down at the river. Once or twice a
passer-by glanced at the two figures leaning there on the hand-
rail, and wondered at the foolishness of people who would stand
in the cold and look at a river full of ice; but David and
Elizabeth did not see the passing world. The hurrying water ran
in a turbulent, foam-streaked flood; great sheets of ice, rocking
and grinding against one another, made a continuous soft crash of
sound. Sometimes one of them would strike the wooden casing of a
pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake
of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long
white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The
river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the
hills, but the last rays of the sun,--a disk of copper sinking
into the brown haze behind the hills,--caught on the broken edges
of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter almost from
shore to shore.

"Elizabeth," David said, "I want to tell you something. I stood
right here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the
evening that Blair told me that you and he--"

"Don't!" she said, shivering.

"I won't," he told her tenderly; "you were only a child; it
didn't mean anything. Don't you suppose I understand? But I
wanted you to know that it was then, nearly eight years ago, when
I was just a boy, that I realized that _I_--" he paused.

She looked at him silently; her lip quivered and she nodded.

"And I have never changed since," he said. "I stood just here,
leaning on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under
his breath; "I didn't know what was the matter with me! I was
only a cub, you know. But"--he spoke very softly--"all of a
sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman on the raft looked up at me.
There was a little baby. . . . Dear, it was then that I knew I
loved you."

At those elemental words her heart came up into her throat. She
could not speak, but suddenly she stooped and kissed the battered
hand-rail where he said his hands had rested.

David, horrified, glancing right and left in the dusk and seeing
no one, put a swift arm about her in which to whisper a single
word. Then, very softly, he kissed her cheek. For a moment she
seemed to ebb away from him; then, abruptly, like, the soft surge
of a returning wave, she sank against his breast and her lips
demanded his. . . .

That night David told his mother. He had been profoundly shaken
by Elizabeth's lovely unexpected motion there in the twilight on
the bridge; it was a motion so divinely unconscious of the
outside world, that he was moved to the point of finding no words
to say how moved he was. But she had felt him tremble from head
to foot when her lips burned against his,--so she needed no
words. His silence still lasted when, after an hour next door
with her, he came home and sat down on the sofa beside his
mother. He nuzzled his blond head against hers for a moment; then
slipped an arm round her waist.

"It's all right, Materna," he said, with a sort of gasp.

"What is, dear?"

"Oh, mother, the idea of asking! The only thing in the world."

"You mean--you and Elizabeth?"

"Yes," he said.

She was silent for a moment; when she spoke her voice broke a
little. "When was it, dear?"

"This afternoon," he said. And once started, he overflowed: "I
can't get my breath yet, though I've known it since a quarter
past four!"

Mrs. Richie laughed, and then sighed. "David, of course I'm
happy, if you are; but--I hope she's good enough for you, dear."
She felt him stiffen against her shoulder.

"Good enough? for _me!_ Materna, she is perfect! Don't you
suppose I know? I've know her nearly all my life, and I can say
she is perfect. She is as perfect as you are; she said you were
perfect this afternoon. Yes; I never supposed I could say that
any woman was as good, and lovely, and pure, as you--"

"David, _please_ don't say such things."

David was not listening. "But I can say it of Elizabeth! Oh, what
a lucky fellow I am! I always thought Blair would get her. He's
such a mighty good fellow,--and so darned good-looking, confound
him!" David ruminated affectionately. "And he can talk; he's not
bottled up, like me. To think she would look at me, when she
could have had him,--or anybody else! It seems kind of mean to
cut Blair out, when he isn't here. He hasn't seen her, you know,
for about two years."

"Perhaps you would like to call it off until he gets home, and
give him a chance?"

David grinned. "No, thank you. Oh, Materna, she is, you know,
really, so--so sort of wonderful! Some time I want to talk to you
about her. I don't believe anybody quite understands Elizabeth
but me. But to think of her caring for me! To think of my having
two such women to care for me." He took her hand gently and
kissed it. "Mother," he said--he spoke with almost painful
effort; "Mother, I want to tell you something. I want to tell
you, because, being what you are, you can't in the least
understand what it means; but I do want you to know: I've never
kissed any woman but you, Materna, until I kissed--_Her_."

"Oh," said Helena Richie, in a stifled voice, "don't, David,
don't; I can't bear it! And if she doesn't make you happy--"

"Make me happy?" David said. He paused; that unasked kiss burned
once more against his lips; he almost shivered at the pang of it.
"Materna," he said hoarsely, "if she or I were to die to-night,
I, at any rate, have had happiness enough in these few hours to
have made it worth while to have lived."

"Love doesn't mean just happiness," she said.

David was silent for a moment; then he said, very gently, "You
are thinking of--of your little boy, who died?"

"Yes; and of my marriage; it was not happy, David."

He pressed his cheek against hers, without speaking. The grief of
an unhappy marriage he had long ago guessed, and in this moment
of his own happiness the remembrance of it was intolerable to
him. As for the other grief: "when I think of the baby," he said,
softly, "I feel as if that little beggar gave me my mother. I
feel as if I had his job; and if I am not a good son--" he
stopped, and looked at her, smiling; but something in her face--
perhaps the pitiful effort to smile back through the tears of an
old, old sorrow, gave him a sudden, solemn thrill; the race pain
stirred in him; he seemed to see his own child, dead, in
Elizabeth's arms.

"Mother!" he said, thickly, and caught her in his arms. She felt
his heart pounding heavily in his side, but she smiled. "Yes,"
she said, "my little boy gave me another son, though I didn't
deserve him! No, no, I didn't," she insisted, laying her soft
mother-hand over his protesting lips; "I used to wonder
sometimes, David, why God trusted you to me, instead of to a--a
better woman--" again she checked his outburst that God had never
made a better woman! "Hush, dear, hush. But I didn't mean that
love might mean sorrow. There are worse things in the world than
sorrow," she ended, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, there are worse things," he said quietly; "of course I know
that. But they are not possible things where Elizabeth is
concerned. There is only one thing that can hurt us: Death."

"Oh, my dear, my dear! Life can hurt so much more than death! So
_much_ more."

But David had nothing more to say of life and love. He retreated
abruptly to the matter of fact; he had gone to his limit, not
only of expression, but of that modesty of soul which forbids
exposure of the emotions, and is as exquisite in a young man as
physical modesty is in a girl. He was unwilling, indeed he was
unable, to show even to his mother, even, perhaps, to Elizabeth,
the speechless depths that had been stirred that afternoon by the
first kiss of passion, and stirred again that night by the sight
of tears for a baby,--a baby dead for almost a quarter of a
century! He got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and
whistled. "Heaven knows how long it will be before we can be
married! How soon do you think I can count on getting patients
enough to get married?"

Mrs. Richie laughed, though there was still a break of pain in
her voice. "My dear boy, when you leave the medical school I mean
to give you an allowance which,--"

"No, Maternal" he interrupted her; "I am going to stand on my own
legs!" David's feeling about self-support gave him a satisfaction
out of all proportion to the pain it sometimes gave his mother.
She winced now, as if his words hurt her.

"David! All that I have is yours."

"No," he said again. "I couldn't accept anything. I believe if a
man can't take care of his wife himself, he has no business to
have a wife. It's bad enough for you to be supporting a big,
hungry medical student; but I swear you sha'n't feed his wife,
too. I can't be indebted, even to you!" he ended, with the
laughing cock-sureness of high-minded youth.

"Indebted? Oh, David!" she said. For a moment his words wounded
her; but when he had left her to go back to Elizabeth again, and
she sat alone by her fireside, she forgot this surface wound in
some deeper pain. David had said he had never kissed any woman
but her, until he kissed _Her_. He had said that the things
that were "worse than death" were not possible to Elizabeth. For
a moment this soft mother felt a stab of something like jealousy;
then her thought went back to that deeper pain. He had not
supposed anybody could be as "perfect" as his mother. Helena
Richie cowered, as if the sacred words were whips; she covered
her face with her hands, and sat a long time without moving.
Perhaps she was thinking of a certain old letter, locked away in
her desk, and in her heart,--for she knew every word of it: "My
child, your secret belongs to your Heavenly Father. It is never
to be taken from His hands, except for one reason: to save some
other child of His. Never for any smaller reason of peace of mind
to yourself."

When she lifted her bowed head from her hands the fire was out.
There were tears upon her face.




CHAPTER X

It was the very next afternoon that Mrs. Maitland found time to
look after Nannie's matrimonial interests. In the raw December
twilight she tramped muddily into Mrs. Richie's firelit parlor,
which was fragrant with hyacinths blossoming on every window-
sill. Mr. Ferguson had started them in August in his own cellar,
for, as any landlord will tell you, it is the merest matter of
business to do all you can for a good tenant. Mrs. Maitland found
her superintendent and Mrs. Richie just shaking hands on David's
luck, Mrs. Richie a little tremulous, and Robert Ferguson a
little grudging, of course.

"Well, I hope they'll be happy," he said, sighing; "I suppose
some marriages _are_ happy, but--"

"Oh, Mr. Ferguson, you are delightful!" Mrs. Richie said; and it
was at that moment that Mrs. Maitland came tramping in. Instantly
the large, vital presence made the charming room seem small and
crowded. There were too many flowers, too many ornaments, too
many photographs of David. Mrs. Maitland sat down heavily on a
gilded chair, that creaked so ominously that she rose and looked
at it impatiently.

"Foolish sort of furniture," she said; "give me something solid,
please, to sit on. Well, Mrs. Richie! How do you do?"

"Nannie has told you our great news?" Mrs. Richie inquired.

"Oh, so it's come to a head, has it?" Mrs. Maitland said, vastly
pleased. "Of course I knew what was in the wind, but I didn't
know it was settled. Fact is, I haven't seen her, except at
breakfast, and then I was in too much of a hurry to think of it.
Well, well, nothing could be better! That's what I came to see
you about; I wanted to hurry things along. What do you say to it,
Mr. Ferguson?"

Mrs. Maitland looked positively benign. She was sitting, a little
gingerly, on the edge of the yellow damask sofa at one side of
the fireplace, her feet wide apart, her skirt pulled back over
her knees, so that her scorching petticoat was somewhat liberally
displayed. Her big shoes began to steam in the comfortable heat
of a soft-coal fire that was blazing and snapping between the
brass jambs.

Mrs. Richie had drawn up a chair beside her, and Robert Ferguson
stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at them.
Even to Mr. Ferguson Mrs. Maitland's presence in the gently
feminine room was incongruous. There was a little table at the
side of the sofa, and Mrs. Maitland, thrusting out a large,
gesticulating hand, swept a silver picture-frame to the floor; in
the confusion of picking it up and putting it into a safer place
the little emotional tension of the moment vanished. Mrs. Richie
winked away a tear, and laughed, and said it was too absurd to
think that their children were men and women, with their own.
lives and interests and hopes--and love-affairs!

"But love-making is in the air, apparently," she said; "young
Knight is going to be married."

"What, Goose Molly's stepson?" Mrs. Maitland said. "She used to
make sheep's-eyes at--at somebody I knew. But she didn't get him!
Well, I must give the boy a present."

"And the next thing," Mrs. Richie went on, "will be Nannie's
engagement. Only it will be hard to find anybody good enough for
Nannie!"

"_Nannie_?" said Mrs. Maitland blankly. "She is to be
Elizabeth's bridesmaid, of course,--unless she gets married
before our wedding comes off. A young doctor has to have patients
before he can have a wife, so I'm afraid the chances are
Elizabeth will be Nannie's bridesmaid."

She was so full of these maternal and womanly visions that the
sudden slight rigidity of Mrs. Maitland's face did not strike
her.

"Nannie has been so interested," Mrs. Richie went on. "David will
always be grateful to her for helping his cause. I don't know
what he would have done without Nannie to confide in!"

Mrs. Maitland's face relaxed. So Nannie had not been slighted?
She herself, Nannie's mother, had made a mistake; that was all.
Well, she was sorry; she wished it had been Nannie. Poor 'thing,
it was lonely for her, in that big, empty house! But these two
people, patting themselves on the back with their personal
satisfaction about their children, they must not guess her wish.
There was no resentment in her mind; it was one of the chances of
business. David had chosen Elizabeth,--more fool David! "for
Nannie'll have--" Mrs. Maitland made some rapid calculations;
"but it's not my kettle of fish," she reflected; and hoisted
herself up from the low, deeply cushioned sofa.

"I hope Elizabeth will put her mind on housekeeping," she said.
"A young doctor has to get all the pork he can for his shilling!
He needs a saving wife."

"She'll have to be a saving wife, I'm afraid," Mrs. Richie said,
with rueful pride, "for that foolish boy of mine declines, if you
please, to be helped out by an allowance from me."

"Oh, he'll have more sense when he's more in love," Mrs. Maitland
assured her easily. "I never knew a man yet who would refuse
honest money when it was offered to him. Well, Mrs. Richie, with
all this marrying going on, I suppose the next thing will be you
and friend Ferguson." Even as she said it, she saw in a flash an
inevitable meaning in the words, and she gave a great guffaw of
laughter. "Bless you! I didn't mean _that_! I meant you'd be
picking up a wife somewhere, Mr. Ferguson, and Mrs. Richie, here,
would be finding a husband. But the other way would be easier,
and a very sensible arrangement."

The two victims of her peculiar sense of humor held themselves as
well as they could. Mrs. Richie reddened slightly, but looked
blank. Robert Ferguson's jaw actually dropped, but he was able to
say casually that of course it would be some time before the
young people could be married.

"Well, give my love to Elizabeth," Mrs. Maitland said: "tell her
not to jump into the river if she gets angry with David. Do you
remember how she did that in one of her furies at Blair, Mr.
Ferguson?" She gave a grunt of a laugh, and took herself off,
pausing at the front door to call back, "Don't forget my good
advice, you people!"

Robert Ferguson, putting on his hat with all possible expedition,
got out of the house almost as quickly as she did. "I'd like to
choke her!" he said to himself. He felt the desire to choke Mrs.
Maitland several times that evening as he sat in his library
pretending to read his newspaper. "She ought to be ashamed of
herself! Mrs. Richie will think I have been--heaven knows what
she will think!"

But the truth was, Mrs. Richie thought nothing at all; she forgot
the incident entirely. It was Robert Ferguson who did the
embarrassed thinking.

As for Mrs. Maitland, she went home through Mercer's mire and
fog, her iron face softening into almost feminine concern. She
was saying to herself that if Nannie didn't care, why, she didn't
care! "But if she hankers after him"--Mrs. Maitland's face
twinged with annoyance; "if she hankers after him, I'll make it
up to her in some way. I'll give her a good big check!" But she
must make sure about the "hankering." It would not be difficult
to make sure. In these silent years together, the strong nature
had drawn the weak nature to it, as a magnet draws a speck of
iron. Nannie, timid to the point of awe, never daring even in her
thoughts to criticize the powerful personality that dominated her
daily life, nestled against it, so to speak, with perfect
content. Sarah Maitland's esthetic deficiencies which separated
her so tragically from her son, did not alienate Nannie. The fact
that her stepmother was rich, and yet lived in a poverty-stricken
locality; that the inconvenience of the old house amounted to
squalor; that they were almost completely isolated from people of
their own class;--none of these things disturbed Nannie. They
were merely "Mamma's ways," that was all there was to say about
them. She was not confidential with Mrs. Maitland, because she
had nothing to confide. But if her stepmother had ever asked any
personal question, she would have been incapable of not replying.
Mrs. Maitland knew that, and proposed to satisfy herself as to
the "hankering."

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