The Iron Woman Part 49

"She wanted you to have the money," Nannie began, faintly.

"Of course she did; but what do you mean about not signing the check 'exactly'?" In his bewilderment, which was not yet alarm, he put his arm around her, laughing: "Nancy, what is all this stuff?"

"I did for her," Nannie said.

"Did what?"

"Signed it."

"Nannie, I don't understand you; do you mean that mother made you indorse that certificate? Nancy, do try to be clear!" He was uneasy now; perhaps some ridiculous legal complication had arisen. "Some of their everlasting red tape! Fortunately, I've got the money all right," he said to himself, dryly.

"She wrote the first part of it," Nannie began, stammering with the difficulty of explaining what had seemed so simple; "but she hadn't the strength to sign her name, so I--did it for her."

Her brother looked at her aghast. "Did she tell you to?"

"No; she ... was dead."

"Good G.o.d!" he said. The shock of it made him feel faint. He sat down, too dumfounded for speech.

"I had to, you see," Nannie explained, breathlessly; she was very much frightened, far more frightened than when she had told Mr.

Ferguson. "I had to, because--because Mamma couldn't. She was ...

not alive."

Blair suddenly put his hands over his face. "You forged mother's name!" His consternation was like a blow; she cringed away from it: "No; I--just wrote it."

"_Nannie!_"

"Somebody had to," she insisted, faintly.

Blair sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the room.

"This is awful. I haven't a cent!"

"Oh," she said, with a gasp, "as far as that goes it doesn't make any difference, except about time. Mr. Ferguson said it didn't make any difference. I'll give it all back to you as soon as I get it. Only you'll have to give it back first."

"Nannie," he said, "for Heaven's sake, tell me _straight_, the whole thing."

She told him as well as she could; speaking with that minute elaboration of the unimportant so characteristic of minds like hers and so maddening to the listener. Blair, in a fury of anxiety, tried not to interrupt, but when she reached Mr.

Ferguson's a.s.sertion that the certificate had been meant for David Richie, the worried color suddenly dropped out of his face.

"For--_him?_ Nannie!"

"No, oh no! It wasn't for David, except just at first--before-- not when--" She was perfectly incoherent, "Let me tell you," she besought him.

"If I thought she had meant it for him, I would send it to him before night! Tell me everything," he said, pa.s.sionately.

"I'm trying to," Nannie stammered, "but you--you keep interrupting me. I'll tell you how it was, if you'll just let me, and not keep interrupting. Perhaps she did plan to give it to David. Mr. Ferguson said she planned to more than two years ago.

And even when she was sick Mr. Ferguson thinks she still meant to."

"I'll fight that d.a.m.ned will to my last breath!" he burst out.

Following the recoil of disgust at the idea of taking anything-- "anything _else_"--that belonged to David Richie, came the shock of feeling that he had been tricked into the sentimentality of forgiveness. "I'll break that will if I take it through every court in the land!"

"But Blair! Mamma _didn't_ mean it for him at the last.

Don't you see? Oh, Blair, listen! Don't be so--terrible; you frighten me," Nannie said, squeezing her hands hard together in the effort to keep from crying. "Listen: she told me on Wednesday, the day before she died, that she wanted to give you a present. She said, 'I must give him a check.' You see, she was beginning to realize how wrong her will was; but of course she didn't know she was going to die or she would have changed it."

"That doesn't follow," Blair said.

"Then came the last day"--Nannie could not keep the tears back any longer; "the last day; but it was too late to do anything about the will. Why, she could hardly speak, it was so near the-- the end. And then all of a sudden she remembered that certificate. And she opened her eyes and looked at me with such relief, as if she said to herself, 'I can give him that!' And she told me to bring it to her. And she kept saying, 'Blair--Blair-- Blair.' And oh, it was pitiful to see her _hurry_ so to write your name! And then she wrote it; but before she could sign her name, her hand sort of--fell. And she tried so hard to raise it so she could sign it; but she couldn't. And she kept muttering that she _had_ written it 'many times, many times'; I couldn't just hear what she said; she sort of--mumbled, you know.

Oh, it was dreadful!"

"And then?" Blair said, breathlessly. Nannie was speechless.

"Then?" he insisted, trembling.

"Then ... she died," Nannie whispered.

"But the signature! The signature! How--"

"In the night, I--" She stopped; terror spread over her face as wind spreads over a pool. "In the night, at three o'clock, I came down-stairs and--" She stopped, panting for breath. He put his arm around her soothingly.

"Try and tell me, dear. I didn't mean to be savage." His face had relaxed. Of course it was dreadful, this thing Nannie had done; but it was not so dreadful as the thought that he had taken money intended for David Richie. When he had quieted her, and she was able to speak again, she told him just what she had done there in the dining-room at three o'clock in the morning.

"But didn't you know it was wrong?" he said; "that it was a criminal offense!" He could not keep the dismay out of his voice.

"I did it for Mamma's sake and yours," she said, quailing.

"Well," he said, and in his relief at knowing that he need not think of David Richie, he was almost gay--"well, you mustn't tell any one else your motive for committing a--" Nannie suddenly burst out crying. "Mamma wouldn't say that to me," she said, "Mamma was never cross to me in her whole life! But you and Mr.

Ferguson--" she could not go on, for tears. He was instantly contrite and tender; but even as he tried to comfort her, he frowned; of course in the end he would suffer no loss, but the immediate situation was delicate and troublesome. "I'll have to go and see Mr. Ferguson, I suppose," he said. "You mustn't speak of it to any one, dear; things really might get serious, if anybody but Mr. Ferguson knew about it. Don't tell a soul; promise me?"

She promised, and Blair left her very soberly. The matter of the money was comparatively unimportant; it was his, subject only to the formality of its transfer to the estate. But that David Richie should have been connected even indirectly with his personal affairs was exquisitely offensive to him--and Elizabeth knew about it! "She's probably sitting there by the window, looking like that robin, and thinking about him," he said to himself angrily, as he hurried back to the River House. There seemed to be no escape from David Richie. "I feel like a dog with a dead hen hanging round his neck," he said to himself, in grimly humorous disgust; "I can't get away from him!"

He found his wife in their parlor at the hotel, but she was not in that listless att.i.tude that he had grown to expect,--huddled in a chair, her chin in her hand, her eyes watching the slow roll of the river. Instead she was alert.

"Blair!" she said, almost before he had closed the door behind him; "I have something to tell you."

"I know about it," he said, gravely; "I have seen Nannie."

Elizabeth looked at him in silence.

"Would you have supposed that Nannie, _Nannie_, of all people! would have had the courage to do such a thing?" he said, nervously; it occurred to him that if he could keep the conversation on Nannie's act, perhaps that--that name could be avoided. "Think of the mere courage of it, to say nothing of its criminality."

"She didn't know she was doing wrong."

"No; of course not. But it's a mighty unpleasant matter."

"Uncle says it can be arranged so that her name needn't come into it."

"Of course," he agreed.