The Iron Woman Part 23

"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 coa.r.s.e 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 d.a.m.n-fool honest.'" She laughed loudly, and her son laughed too, this time in genuine amus.e.m.e.nt; 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_ d.a.m.n-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. "G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+lling than I can!"

Blair cast an agonized look at Nannie; then set himself to his task again--in rather a roundabout way: "Why don't you spend some of your money on yourself, Mother, instead of on me?"

"There's nothing I want."

"But there are so many things you could have!"

"I have everything I need," said Mrs. Maitland; "a roof, a bed, a chair, and food to eat. As for all this truck that people spend their money on, what use is it? that's what I want to know!

What's it worth?"

Blair put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small beautifully carved jade box; he took off the lid delicately, and shook a scarab into the palm of his hand. "I'll tell you what _that_ is worth," he said, holding the dull-blue oval between his thumb and finger; then he mentioned a sum that made Nannie exclaim. His mother put down her knitting, and taking the bit of eternity in her fingers, looked at it silently. "Do you wonder I got that box, which is a treasure in itself, to hold such a treasure?" Blair exulted.

Mrs. Maitland, handing the scarab back, began to knit furiously.

"That's what it's worth," he said; he was holding the scarab in his palm with a sort of tenderness; his eyes caressed it. "But it isn't what I paid. The collector was hard up, and I made him knock off twenty-five per cent, of the price."

"Hah!" said Mrs. Maitland; "well; I suppose 'all's fair in love and collections'?"

"What's unfair in that?" Blair said, sharply; "I buy in the cheapest market. You do _that_ yourself, my dear mother."

When Blair said "my dear mother," he was farthest from filial affection. "Besides," he said, with strained self-control, "besides, I'm like you, I'm not 'd.a.m.n-fool honest'!"

"Oh, I didn't say you weren't honest. Only, if I was going to take advantage of anybody, I'd do it for something more important than a blue china beetle." "The trouble with you, Mother, is that you don't see anything but those hideous Works of yours!" her son burst out.

"If I did, you couldn't pay for your china beetles. Beetles? You couldn't pay for the breeches you're sitting in!"

"Oh, Mamma! oh, Blair!" sighed poor Nannie.

There was a violent silence. Suddenly Mrs. Maitland brought the flat of her hand furiously down on the table; then, without a word, got on her feet, pulled at the ball of pink worsted which had run behind a chair and caught under the caster; her jerk broke the thread. The next moment the parlor door banged behind her.

Nannie burst out crying. Blair opened and closed his lips, speechless with rage.

"What--what made her so angry?" Nannie said, catching her breath.

"Was it the beetle?"

"Don't call it that ridiculous name! I'll have to borrow the $5,000. And where the devil I'll get it I don't know. Nannie, 'goose Molly' wasn't an entire fool, after all!"

"Blair!" his sister protested, horrified. But Blair was too angry to be ashamed of himself. He could not see that his mother's anger was only the other side of her love. In Sarah Maitland, not only maternity, but pride, the peculiar pride engendered in her by her immense business--pride and maternity together, demanded such high things of her son! Not finding them, the pain of disappointment broke into violent expression. Indeed, had this charming fellow, handsome, selfish, sweet-hearted, been some other woman's son, she would have been far more patient with him.

Her very love made her abominable to him. She was furiously angry when she left him there in Nannie's parlor; all the same he did not have to borrow the $5,000.

The next morning Sarah Maitland sent for her superintendent. "Mr.

Ferguson," she said--they were in her private office, and the door was shut; "Mr. Ferguson, I think--but I don't know--I think Blair has been making an idiot of himself again. I saw in the paper that somebody called Maitland had been throwing money away on a picture. I don't know what it was, and I don't want to know.

It was 14x18 inches; not feet. That was enough for me. Why, Ferguson, those big pictures in my parlor (I bought them when I was going to be married; a woman is sort of foolish then; I wouldn't do such a thing now), those four pictures are 4x6 feet each; and they cost me $400; $100 apiece. But this New York man has paid $5,000 for one picture 14x18 inches! If it was Blair-- and it came over me last night, all of a sudden, that it was; he hasn't got any $5,000 to pay for it. I don't want to go into the matter with him; we don't get along on such subjects. But I want you to ask him about it; maybe he'll speak out to you, man fas.h.i.+on. If this 'Maitland' is just a fool of our name so much the better; but if it is Blair, I've got to help him out, I suppose. I want you to settle the thing for me. I--can't." Her voice broke on the last word; she coughed and cleared her throat before she could speak distinctly. "I haven't the time," she said.