"Hullo, Elizabeth," her uncle called out, carelessly; and Mrs. Richie came over and kissed her.
So that first terrible moment was lived through. During luncheon, they hardly spoke to each other. Elizabeth, with obvious effort, talked to Mrs. Richie of Nannie and Mrs. Maitland; David talked easily and (for him) a great deal, to Robert Ferguson; he talked politics, and disgusted his iron-manufacturing host by denouncing the tariff; he talked municipal affairs, and said that Mercer had a lot of private virtue, but no public morals. "Look at your streets!" said the squirt. In those days, the young man who criticized the existing order was a squirt; now he is a cad; but in the nostrils of middle age, he is as rankly unpleasant by one name as by the other. Elizabeth's uncle was so annoyed that he forgot the embarrassment of the occasion, and said, satirically, to Mrs. Richie: "Well, well! 'See how we apples swim'!" which made her laugh, but did not disturb David in the least. The moment luncheon was over, Elizabeth rose.
"I must go and see Nannie," she said; and David, opening the door for her, said, "I'll go along with you." At which their elders exchanged a startled look.
Out in the street they walked side by side—these two between whom there was a great gulf fixed. By that time the strain of the occasion had begun to show in Elizabeth's face; she was pale, and the tension of her set lips drew the old dimple into a livid line. David was apparently entirely at ease, speaking lightly of this or that; Elizabeth answered in monosyllables. Once, at a crossing, he laid an involuntary hand on her arm—but instantly lifted it as if the touch had burnt him! "Lookout!" he said, and for the first time his voice betrayed him. But before the clattering dray had passed, his taciturn self-control had returned: "you can hardly hear yourself think, in Mercer," he said. Elizabeth was silent; she had come to the end of effort.
It was not until they reached the iron gate of Mrs. Maitland's house that he dragged his quivering reality out of the inarticulate depths, but his brief words were flat and meaningless to the strained creature beside him.
"I was glad to see you to-day," he said.
And she, looking at him with hard eyes, said that it was very kind in him and in his mother to come on to Mrs. Maitland's funeral. "Nannie was so touched by it," she said. She could not say another word; not even good-by. She opened the gate and fled up the steps to the front door.
David, so abruptly deserted, stood for a full minute looking at the dark old house, where the wistaria looping above the pillared doorway was blossoming in wreaths of lavender and faint green.
Then he laughed aloud. "What a fool I am," he said.