For she believed, as other parents have believed before her—and probably will go on believing as long as there are parents and sons—she believed that she could, in some way or other, by the very strength of her agonizing love, force into her son's soul from the outside that Kingdom of God which must be within. "Oh, what am I going to do?" she said to herself.
She stood still and covered her face with her hands. "God," she said, "don't punish him! It's my fault; punish me."
Perhaps she had never really prayed before.
CHAPTER XX
Robert Ferguson, in his library, and poor Miss White in the hall, listened with tense nerves for the wheels of the carriage that was to bring David Richie "to breakfast."
"Send him in to me," Mr. Ferguson had said; and then had shut himself into his library.
Miss White was quivering with terror when at last she heard the carriage door bang. David came leaping up the steps, his face rosy as a girl's in the raw morning air—it was a lowering Mercer morning, with the street lamps burning at eight o'clock in a murk of smoke and fog. He raked the windows with a smiling glance, and then stood, laughing for sheer happiness, waiting for her to open the door to him.
David had had a change of spirit, if not of mind, since he wrote his eminently sensible letter to Elizabeth. He had been able to scrape up enough money of his own to pay at least one of his bills, and things had gone better with him at the hospital, so he no longer felt the unreasonable humiliation which Elizabeth's proposal had accentuated in him. The reproach which his mood had read into her letter had vanished after a good night's sleep and a good day's work; now, it seemed to him only an exquisite expression of most lovely love, which brought the color into his face, and made his lips burn at the thought of her lips! Of course her idea of marrying on her little money was not to be thought of—he and Mr. Ferguson would laugh over it together; but what an angel she was to think of it! All that night, in the journey over the mountains, he had lain in his berth and looked out at the stars, cursing himself joyously for a dumb fool who had had no words to tell her how he loved her for that sweet, divinely foolish proposal, which was "not to be thought of"! "But when I see her, I'll make her understand; when I hold her in my arms—" he told himself, with all the passion of twenty-six years which had no easy outlet of speech.
When Robert Ferguson's door opened, his heart was on his lips. "Eliz—" he began, and stopped short. "Oh, Miss White. Good morning, Miss White!" And before poor Cherry-pie knew it, he had given her a great hug; "Where is Elizabeth? Not out of bed yet? Oh, the lazybones!" He was so eager that, until he was fairly in the hall, with the front door shut, and his overcoat almost off, he did not notice her silence. Then he gave her a startled look. "Miss White! is anything the matter? Is Elizabeth ill?"
"No; oh, no," she said breathlessly; "but—Mr. Ferguson will tell you.
No, she is not sick. Go, he will tell you. In the library."