She made no answer; and he burst out in sudden angry pain: "You don't care what I do!" Still she did not speak. "You—you are thinking of him still," he said between set teeth. This constant corroding thought did not often break through his studied purpose to win her by his passionately considerate tenderness; when it did, it always ended in bitterness for him.
"Of course I am thinking of him," she would say, dully; "I never stop thinking of him."
"I believe you would go back to him now!" he flung at her
"Go back to him? I would go back to him on my hands and knees if he would take me."
Words like that left him speechless with misery; and yet he was happy—she was his wife!
When his bank account began to dwindle, he found it easy to borrow; the fact that he was the son of his mother (and consequently his bills had always been paid) was sufficient collateral. That he borrowed at a ruinous interest was a matter of indifference to a man who, having never earned a dollar, had not the slightest idea of the value of a dollar. At the end of the first year of his marriage, jewels for Elizabeth seemed less important to him than her bread and butter; and it was then that with real anxiety he tried to find something to do. Again "Sarah Maitland's son" found doors open to him which the ordinary man, inexperienced and notoriously idle, would have found closed; but none of them offered what he thought a sufficient salary; and by and by he realized that very soon he would be obliged, as he expressed it, "to sponge on Elizabeth"; for, reckless as he was, he knew that his borrowing capacity must come to an end. When the "sponging" finally began, he was acutely uncomfortable, which was certainly to his credit. At any rate, it proved that he was enough of a man to be miserable under such conditions. When a husband who is young and vigorous lives idly on his wife's money one of two things happens: he is miserable, or he degenerates into contentment. Blair was not degenerating—consequently he was honestly wretched.
His attempts to find something to do were not without humor to his mother, who kept herself informed, of course, of all his "business" ventures. "What! he wants the Dalzells to take him on? What for? Errand-boy? That's all he's good for. But I'm afraid two dollars and a half a week won't buy him many china beetles!" When Blair essayed a broker's office she even made an ancient joke to her superintendent: "If Blair could buy himself for what he is worth to Haines, and sell himself for what he thinks he's worth, he might make a fair profit,—and pick up some more old masters."
But she was impatient for him to get through with all this nonsense of dilly-dallying at making a living by doing things he knew nothing about! How soon would he get down to hard-pan and knock at her door at the Works and ask for a job, man-fashion? "That's what I want to know!" she used to tell Mr. Ferguson, who was silent. He did not want to know anything about Blair; all he cared for was to help his girl bear the burden of her folly. He called it "folly" now, and Miss White used to nod her old head in melancholy agreement. It was only to Robert Ferguson that Mrs. Maitland betrayed her constant anxiety about her son; and it was that anxiety which made her keenly sensitive to Elizabeth's deepening depression. For as the excitement of sacrifice and punishment wore off, and the strain of every-day living began to tell, Elizabeth's depression was very marked. She was never angry now—she had not the energy for anger; and she was never unkind to Blair; perhaps her own pain made her pitiful of his. But she was always, as Cherry-pie expressed it, "under a cloud." Mrs. Maitland, watching her, wondered if she was moody because funds were getting low. How intensely she hoped that was the reason! "I reckon that money of hers is coming to an end," she used to think, triumphantly—for she had known, through Nannie, just when Blair had reached the point at which he had been obliged to use his wife's capital. Whenever she saw Elizabeth—who for want of anything better to do came constantly to see Nannie: she would drop a word or two which she thought might go back to her son: "We need an extra hand in the office." Or: "How would Blair like to travel for the Works? We can always take on a traveling man."
She never had the chance to drop her hints to Blair himself. In vain Nannie urged upon her brother her old plea: "Be nice to Mamma. Do come and see her. Everything will be all right again if you will only come and see her!" Nothing moved him. If his mother could be firm, so could he; he was never more distinctly her son than in his obstinacy.
"If she alters her will," he said, briefly, "I will alter my behavior.
She's not my mother so long as she casts off her son."