And Blair, under his breath, said, "Thank God!"
CHAPTER XXIV
The coming back to Mercer some six weeks later was to Blair a miserable and skulking experience. To Elizabeth it was almost a matter of indifference; there is a shame which goes too deep for embarrassment. The night they arrived at the River House, Nannie and Miss White were waiting for them, tearful and disapproving, of course, but distinctly excited and romantic. After all, Elizabeth was a "bride!" and Cherry-pie and Nannie couldn't help being fluttered. Blair listened with open amusement to their half-scared gossip of what people thought, and what the newspapers had said, and how "very displeased" his mother had been; but Elizabeth hardly heard them. At the end of the call, while Blair was bidding Nannie tell his mother he was coming to see her in the morning. Miss White, kissing her "lamb" good night, tried to whisper something in her ear: "He said to tell you—" "No—no—no,—I can't hear it; I can't bear it yet!" Elizabeth broke in; she put her hands over her eyes, shivering so that Cherry-pie forgot David and his message, and even her child's bad behavior.
"Elizabeth! you've taken cold?"
Elizabeth drew away, smiling faintly. "No; not at all. I'm tired.
Please don't stay." And with the message still unspoken, Miss White and
Nannie went off together, as fluttering and frightened as when they
came.
The newspaper excitement which had followed the announcement of the elopement of Sarah Maitland's son, had subsided, so there was only a brief notice the morning after their arrival in town, to the effect that "the bride and groom had returned to their native city for a short stay before sailing for Europe." Still, even though the papers were inclined to let them alone, it would be pleasanter, Blair told his wife, to go abroad.
"Well," she said, dully. Elizabeth was always dull now. She had lifted herself up to the altar, but there was no exaltation of sacrifice; possibly because she considered her sacrifice a punishment for her sin, but also because she was still physically and morally stunned.
"Of course there is nobody in Mercer for whose opinion I care a copper," Blair said. They were sitting in their parlor at the hotel; Elizabeth staring out of the window at the river, Blair leaning forward in his chair, touching once in a while, with timid fingers, a fold of her skirt that brushed his knee. "Of course I don't care for a lot of gossiping old hens; but it will be pleasanter for you not to be meeting people, perhaps?" he said gently.
There was only one person whom he himself shrank from meeting—his mother. And this shrinking was not because of the peculiar shame which the thought of Mrs. Richie had awakened in him that morning in the woods, when the vision of her delicate scorn had been so unbearable; his feeling about his mother was sheer disgust at the prospect of an interview which was sure to be esthetically distressing. While he was still absent on what the papers called his "wedding tour," Nannie had written to him warning him what he might expect from Mrs. Maitland:
"Mamma is terribly displeased, I am afraid, though she hasn't said a word since the night I told her. Then she said very severe things—and oh, Blair, dear, why did you do it the way you did? I think Elizabeth was perfectly—" The unfinished sentence was scratched out. "You must be nice to Mamma when you come home," she ended.