The Iron Woman | Page 9

look after another pupil."
"I'd be delighted to," Mrs. Richie said, gratefully. So, through the good
offices of Mr. Ferguson, the arrangement was made. Mr. Ferguson did
not approve of Mrs. Richie's rings, but he had no objection to helping
her about David.
And that was how it happened that these four little lives were thrown
together--four threads that were to be woven into the great fabric of
Life.

CHAPTER II

On the other side of the street, opposite the Maitland house, was a
huddle of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and
seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of
their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to
shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky
flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and
children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland
Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black surface--or a soft, black
surface, when it rained. These little huddling houses called themselves
Maitland's Shantytown, and they looked up at the Big House, standing
in melancholy isolation behind its fence of iron spears, with the pride
that is common to us all when we find ourselves in the company of our
betters. Back of the little houses was a strip of waste land, used for a
dump; and beyond it, bristling against the sky, the long line of Mercer's
stacks and chimneys.
In spite of such surroundings, the Big House, even as late as the early
seventies, was impressive. It was square, with four great chimneys, and
long windows that ran from floor to ceiling. Its stately entrance and its
two curving flights of steps were of white marble, and so were the
lintels of the windows; but the stone was so stained and darkened with
smoky years of rains and river fogs, that its only beauty lay in the noble
lines that grime and time had not been able to destroy. A gnarled and
twisted old wistaria roped the doorway, and, crawling almost to the
roof, looped along the eaves, in May it broke into a froth of exquisite
purple and faint green, and for a week the garland of blossoms,
murmurous with bees, lay clean and lovely against the narrow, old
bricks which had once been painted yellow. Outside, the house had a
distinction which no superficial dilapidation could mar; but inside
distinction was almost lost in the commonplace, if not in actual
ugliness. The double parlors on the right of the wide hall had been
furnished in the complete vulgarity of the sixties; on the left was the
library, which had long ago been taken by Mrs. Maitland as a bedroom,
for the practical reason that it opened into the dining-room, so her desk
was easily accessible at any time of night, should her passion for toil
seize her after working-hours were over. The walls of this room were
still covered with books, that no one ever read. Mrs. Maitland had no

time to waste on reading; "I live," she used to say; "I don't read about
living!" Except the imprisoned books, the only interesting things in the
room were some _cartes-de-visite_ of Blair, which stood in a dusty row
on the bureau, one of them propped against her son's first present to
her--the unopened bottle of Johann Maria Farina. When Blair was a
man, that bottle still stood there, the kid cap over the cork split and
yellow, the ribbons of the little calendar hanging from its green neck,
faded to streaky white.
The office dining-room, about which Blair had begun to be impertinent
when he was eight years old, was of noble proportions and in its day
must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over.
Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather
had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues
and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose
colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room
was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller
desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French
windows were uncurtained, and the inside shutters folded back, so that
the silent clerks might have the benefit of every ray of daylight filtering
wanly through Mercer's murky air. A long table stood in the middle of
the room; generally it was covered with blue-prints, or the usual
impedimenta of an office. But it was not an office table; it was of
mahogany, scratched and dim to be sure, but matching the ancient
claw-footed sideboard whose top was littered with letter