Of course, after a while, as time passed, all the people who had been caught in the storm the two reckless creatures had let loose, shook down again into their grooves, and the routine of living went on. There are few experiences more bewildering to the unhappy human heart than this of discovering that things do go on. Innumerable details of the unimportant flood in and fill up the cracks and breaches that grief has made in the structure of life; we continue to live, and even to find life desirable!
Miss White had been the first to realize this; her love for Elizabeth, being really (poor old maid!) maternal, was independent of respect, so almost the next day she had been able to settle down with complete happiness into the old habit of loving. Blair's mother was the next to get into the comfortable track of routine; the very day after she came back from that trip to Philadelphia she plunged into business. She did, however, pause long enough to tell her superintendent how she was going to "even things up with David."
"I am going to give him a lot of money for a hospital," she said. "I'm not going to leave it to him; I'm only sixty-two, and I don't propose to die yet awhile. When I do Blair will probably contest the will. He can't break it. It's cast-iron. But I don't want David to wait until I'm dead and gone, and Blair has given up trying to break my will, and the estate is settled. I'm going to give it to him before I die. In a year or two, maybe. I'm realizing on securities now—why don't I give him the securities? My dear sir, what does a doctor know about securities? Doctors have no more financial sense than parsons—at least, not much more," she added, with relenting justice. "No; David is to have his money, snug in the bank—that new bank, on Federal Street. I told the president I was rolling up a nest-egg for somebody—I could see he thought it was for Blair! I didn't enlighten him, because I don't want the thing talked about. When I get the amount I want, I'll hand Master David a bank certificate of deposit, and with all his airs about accepting money, he won't be able to help himself! He'll have to build his hospital, and draw his wages. It will make him independent of his outside customers, you see. Yes, I guess I can whip the devil round the stump as well as the next person!" she said, bridling with satisfaction. So, with an interest and a hope, Sarah Maitland, like Miss White, found life worth living.
With David's mother the occupation of trying to help David made living desirable. It also made her a little more remote from other people's interests. Poor Robert Ferguson discovered this to his cost: it had occurred to him that now, when they were all so miserable, she might perhaps "be willing." But she was not. When, a day or two after he had gone to see Elizabeth, he went to Philadelphia, Mrs. Richie was tremulously glad to see him, so that she might pour out her fears about David and ask advice on this point and that. "Being a man, you understand better than I do," she acknowledged meekly; then broke down and cried for her boy's pain. And when the kind, barking old friend, himself blinking behind misty spectacles, said, "Oh, now, my dear, don't cry," she was so comforted that she cried some more, and for a single minute found her head most unexpectedly on his shoulder. But all the same, she was not "willing."
"Don't ask me, dear Mr. Ferguson," she said, wiping her eyes. "We are such good friends, and I'm so fond of you, don't let's spoil it all."
"I believe you are fond of me," he said, "and that is why it's so unreasonable in you not to marry me. I don't ask—impossibilities. But you do like me; and I love you, you dear, good, foolish woman;—so good that you couldn't see badness when it lived next door to you!"
"Don't be so hard on people who do wrong," she pleaded; "you make me afraid of you when you are so hard."
"I'm not hard; Elizabeth is her mother's daughter; that's all." "Oh!" she cried, with sudden passion, "that poor mother! Can't you forgive her?"
"No," he said; "I can't."
"You ought to forgive Elizabeth, at any rate," she insisted, faintly; "and you ought to go and see her."