[Illustration: SHE WHEELED ABOUT AND STOOD, SWAYING WITH FRIGHT]
CHAPTER XXX
The Maitland Works were still. High in the dusty gloom of the foundry, a finger of sunshine pointing down from a grimy window touched the cold lip of a cupola and traveled noiselessly over rows of empty molds upon the blackened floor. The cast-house was silent. The Yards were deserted. The pillar of fire was out; the pillar of smoke had faded away.
In the darkened parlor of her great house, Sarah Maitland was still, too. Lines of sunshine fell between the bowed shutters, and across them wavering motes swam noiselessly from gloom to gloom. The marble serenities of death were without sound; the beautiful, powerless hands were empty, even of the soft futility of flowers; some one had placed lilies-of-the-valley in them, but her son, with new, inarticulate appreciation, lifted them and took them away. The only sound that broke the dusky stillness of the room was the subdued brush of black garments, or an occasional sigh, or the rustle of a furtively turned page of a hymn-book. Except when, standing shoulder to shoulder in the hall, her business associates, with hats held decorously before whispering lips, spoke to each other of her power and her money,—who now had neither money nor power,—the house was profoundly still. Then, suddenly, from the head of the stairs, a Voice fell into the quietness:
"Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live. When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every man, therefore, is vanity. For man walketh in a vain show, and disquieteth—" the engine of a passing freight coughed, and a cloud of smoke billowed against the windows; the strips of sunshine falling between the shutters were blotted out; came again—went again. Over and over the raucous running jolt of backing cars, the rattling bump of sudden breaks, swallowed up the voice, declaring the eternal silence: ". . . glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is . . . of the sun, and another glory of the moon, for one star differeth from . . . Dust to dust, ashes to ashes . . ."
Out in the street the shadow of her house fell across the meager dooryard, where, on its blackened stems, the pyrus japonica showed some scattered blood-red blossoms; it fell over Shantytown, that packed the sidewalk and stared from dingy doors and windows; it fell on her men, standing in unrebuked idleness, their lowered voices a mutter of energy held, for this waiting moment, in leash. A boy who had climbed up the lamp-post announced shrilly that "It" was coming. Some girls, pressing against the rusted iron spears of the fence, and sagging under the weight of babies almost as big as themselves, called across the street to their mothers, "Here she is!"
And so she came. No squalor of her surroundings could mar the pomp of her approach. The rumble of her men's voices ceased before it; Shantytown fell silent. Out from between the marble columns of her doorway, out from under the twisted garland of wistaria murmurous with bees, down the curving steps, along the path to the crowded, curious sidewalk, she came. Out of the turmoil and the hurry of her life, out of her triumphs and arrogances and ambitions, out of her careless generosities and her extraordinary successes, she came. And following her, with uncovered head, came the sign and symbol of her failure—her only son.
Up-stairs, in the front hall, standing a little back from the wide arched window, Nannie,—forbidden by the doctor, because of her fatigue, to go to the grave; and Elizabeth and Miss White, who would not leave her alone,—looked down on the slowly moving crowd. When Sarah Maitland's men closed in behind her, nearly a thousand strong, and the people in twos and threes began to file out of the house, Nannie noiselessly turned a slat of the Venetian blind. Why! there were those Maitlands from the North End. "I didn't suppose they remembered our existence," she said, her breath still catching in a sob; "and there are the Knights," she whispered to Elizabeth. "Do you see old Mrs. Knight? I don't believe she's been to call on Mamma for ten years. I never supposed she'd come."
Miss White, wiping her eyes as she peered furtively through the blinds, said in a whisper that there was So-and-so, and that such and such a person was evidently going out to the cemetery. "Mrs. Knight is dreadfully lame, isn't she?" Nannie said. "Poor Mamma always called her Goose Molly. It was nice in her to come, wasn't it?"
"Nannie," some one said, softly. And turning, she saw Mrs. Richie. "I came on last night, Nannie dear. She was a good, kind friend to me. And David is here, too. He hopes you will feel like seeing him. He was very fond of her." Then she looked at Elizabeth: "How do you do? How is Blair?" she said, calmly.