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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37208-0.txt b/37208-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8d0515c --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11450 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wayfarers, by Mary Stewart Cutting + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wayfarers + +Author: Mary Stewart Cutting + +Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens + +Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: _Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome_] + + + + + THE WAYFARERS + + BY + + MARY STEWART CUTTING + + AUTHOR OF LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP, + LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE, ETC. + + ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS + + NEW YORK + THE McCLURE COMPANY + MCMVIII + + + + + _Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company_ + Published, June, 1908 + Copyright, 1907, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Company + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Her Cousin’s Arms were at Last Around Her in Welcome Frontispiece + +They Both Sat Dreamily Watching the Blue Pinnacle of Flame 24 + +Theodosia 34 + +Zaidee Watched Dosia with Benignant Satisfaction 82 + +He Played a Chord or Two More to Her Silence 146 + +It was a Look She Knew 184 + +Like a Pictured Marchioness of Old 190 + +Somebody Began to Come Down with Hurrying, Stumbling Feet 192 + +Mr. Sutton Leaned over Dosia with Eyes for Nobody Else 230 + +Flowers and Children, Children and Flowers 238 + +“Never Let Him Come Here Again--Never, Never!” 246 + +Even Redge Had Been Allowed to Hold Him 278 + +After This He Only Appeared in the Village Street Guarded on + Either Side by a Female Snow 280 + +He Came Toward Her with the Pitcher 312 + +Sat Desolately on the Top Step 334 + +He Held Out His Arm Unconsciously as Lois Stole into the Room 372 + + + + +THE WAYFARERS + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat crowded with human +beings at a quarter of six o’clock in the evening, when the great +homeward rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. At that +time, although there are some returning shoppers and women type-writers +and clerks, the larger number of the passengers are men, sitting in +slanting rows to catch the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an +upright mass at the forward end of the boat. It is noticeable that, with +a few exceptions, those who have gone forth in the morning distinct +individuals, well dressed, freshly shaven, with clean linen, an animated +manner, a brisk step, and an eager-eyed disposition toward the labors of +the day, seem, as they return at night, to be only component parts of a +shabby crowd in indistinguishable apparel, and worn to a uniform +dullness not only of appearance but of attitude and expression. The hard +day’s work is over, but the rest is not yet attained. We all know that +between the darkness and the dawn comes the period when vitality is at +its lowest ebb, and in all transition periods there is a subtle +withdrawing of the old force before the new fills its place. In that +temporary collapse in the daily adjustment between two lives, the +business and the domestic, many a man with overwrought brain and tired +body feels that what he has been looking forward to as a happy rest +appears to him now momentarily as an unavoidable and wearying need for +further effort. The demand upon him varies in kind, but it is still +there. + +Men in a mass are neither beautiful nor impressive to look at in the +modern black or sad-colored raiment of every-day custom, and it is +difficult, as the eyes rest on the faces in these commonplace rows, to +realize the space which love inevitably fills in these lives, so far +apart from romance do they seem, forgetful as we are of the worn truth +that romance is a flowering weed which grows in any soil. For three +fourths of these men some woman waits. Those dull eyes can gleam, those +set lips can kiss; these be heroes, handsome men, arbiters of destiny! +There is positive grotesqueness in the idea, seen in this obliterating +haze of fatigue that so maliciously dwarfs and slurs. That man over +there with the long upper lip and closed lids has an episode in his +middle-aged existence to match any in the annals of fiction. That other +beside him, short, fat, with kind eyes and a stubby brown beard, is the +sum of all that is good and beautiful to the wife for whom his +homecoming continues to be the poignant event of the day. This man with +the long, thin face is a modern martyr working himself to death for his +family; this one was in the newspapers last week in a connection best +not remembered. This one—you would pick him out at once from among the +rest—is to be married to-morrow. This man, and this, and this, while +presently unconscious of the great law, are still living under it. Not +only to youth is the promise given; it becomes a larger and more vital +thing as the opportunities of life increase, further spreading in its +fostering of good or evil—a thread so deeply interwoven on the under +side of the fabric that we forget to look for it. + +In every case is a character to be made or marred, not only by the large +molding, but by the infinitesimal touches of that love whose influence +we conventionally limit to young and unmarried persons—while knowing, +whether we acknowledge it or not, that it is the one eternally powerful +element in life. + +Even in a far-off reflex action, this is shown on the ferry-boat in the +fact that when one of this blended concourse of men meets a woman he +instantly regains an individuality; he pulls himself together, his eyes +become bright, his manner concentrated, his clothes set well on him. He +is no longer one of the crowd, but himself. + +Tireless youth may achieve the same individual effect, or unusual +personal beauty, or great happiness, or the possession of a dominant +idea. A number of people, as they came forward on the boat, turned to +look back at two men sitting by the narrow passageway, who in the midst +of the general indifference were talking in a low tone, with obviously +intense earnestness. Those who looked once usually turned a second time +to gaze on the face of one. + +Many a man who has an upright nature and a good disposition fails to +show these facts patently to the casual observer. To Justin Alexander +had been given the grace of a singularly attractive countenance. He was +of a fair complexion, with light hair, a good nose slightly aquiline, +and a well-shaped mouth and chin; but his charm was irrespective of +feature. No one could look at him and not know him to be a man of sweet +and fine honor. The gaze of his keen blue eyes—clear, though not very +large—carried conviction to whomsoever it rested on that a clean and +honest soul dwelt therein. Although he did not in the least realize it, +this had been one of the greatest factors in any success that he had +ever had, joined as it was to good judgment and great physical energy. +Everyone liked him, not for what he said or did, but for what he was, +and for the encouragement of his bright glance, which had a convincing +and magnetic quality in it. He talked intelligently and well, although +not a great deal, and among the many people who were drawn toward him a +corresponding liking on his part was easily inferred. Yet he was, in +fact, innately although dumbly critical; a reticent man as to his own +thoughts and opinions, he took an inward measurement of persons and +circumstances often the very reverse of what was supposed. This attitude +of his was in no sense of the word hypocritical, it came instead from a +constitutional dislike of voicing his innermost feelings. It somehow +hurt him to acknowledge defects in others, and he had also an impersonal +sense of justice which allowed for good qualities in those who were +uncongenial to him; he did not really like the man who sat beside him, +and with whom he had the prospect of being intimately associated, but +even his wife had hardly divined this; certainly Joseph Leverich +himself, large, jovial, and shrewd-eyed, would have been the last to +suspect it. + +“The gist of the matter is this, Alexander,” he was saying, as he hit +one hand heavily with the large forefinger of the other, “we want a man +capable not only of overseeing the works,—Harker understands that +pretty well,—but of managing the real business of the factory and +representing it with business men; neither Foster nor I can attend to +it—Great Scott, I wish we could! We haven’t the time. We bought the +whole outfit a couple of years ago; it’s only one of twenty other irons +we have in the fire.” + +“I know that your interests are large,” said Alexander, as Leverich +paused. + +“The great drawback to having large interests is that you have to +delegate so much of the management to others. When we took up this, it +ran itself, after a fashion; but since that a dozen other people are +making the same thing—of course, with slight variations, but +practically the same thing. Patents don’t really protect you much. Now +we want our machine pushed; but neither Foster nor I, for different +reasons, can do this. The fact is, we don’t want to appear at all. And +we’ve had our eye on you for some time.” + +“This is news to me,” said Alexander. + +“Now the control of the factory has to be settled suddenly, out of hand; +somebody has got to take hold. So we make you the offer. We will deposit +fifty thousand to your credit, to be used as working capital—you can’t +branch out with less; you’ve got to be able to work to advantage. The +days have gone when a business could be set going on a couple of +thousand and worked up with industry and frugality, as the copy-books +say, into the millions. Small concerns nowadays go to the wall—and +serve ’em right, I say; only fools believe in success without money. +We’ll see to your backing! Of course, the interest will be paid out of +the business, you don’t undertake it individually. At the end of two +years more we ought to have a big thing.” + +“And if we don’t?” said Alexander. + +The other’s dim gooseberry eyes suddenly flashed. “If you think we will +not, you are not the man we want—he’s got to have the courage of his +convictions to be worth his salt. But you can’t put me off this way—I +know you. Take up the project or leave it—I say this, but in reality +you can’t leave it, and you know it. A man doesn’t get a chance like +this twice. Hamilton came to us the other day for the position, and we +refused him, although he had capital and we wouldn’t have had to advance +a cent of the money we’re willing to put up for you.” + +“But why are you willing to?” Justin looked with his bright eyes at the +other. + +“Because you are the man we want!” Leverich leaned forward eagerly, and +shifted his large frame so as to put each muscle into an easier +position. “Don’t let’s go over that old ground again. You’ve had just +the experience in the old company that we need; but it’s your wide +acquaintance that tells, and it’s that that we’re willing to buy. We +believe you can make a market for our goods.” + +“It is an important step,” said the other thoughtfully, “to leave a +certainty for an uncertainty—not that I should regard it as an +uncertainty if I took it,” he added, with a smile. + +“I know it’s hard to break away and start out for yourself when you have +a family; lots of men go all their lives in a rut because they haven’t +the courage to take the plunge. But you don’t want to work for somebody +else all your life; you don’t want to feel that you’re wasting all your +best years. By and by it will be too late. And a growing family takes +more money each year, instead of less—you’ve got to think of that, too. +It’s a terrible thing to be always cramped, and know there’s no way out +of it in this world.” + +“You don’t need to tell me all this, Leverich,” said Justin coolly. + +“No, I know I don’t; but I want you to realize that you have your chance +now—one in a million. I’m sorry to hurry you, but you see the way we’re +fixed. Say the word now! Get it off your mind and you’ll sleep easier. I +know what your word is—as good as your bond. _I’d_ take it! You can +give any formal decision later.” + +Justin still smiled, but he shook his head; though capable of quick +decision when necessary, it was yet impossible to hurry him; his actions +in every case depended on his own thought, and gained no volition from +outside influences, which might indeed retard but could never compel. +Virtually he had concluded to accept Leverich’s offer, but he would take +his own time about saying so; he felt the haste of the other man to be +somewhat of an offense against decency. + +“Well!” Leverich shrugged his heavy shoulders at the bright +impenetrableness that was like a shining armor. “We said we’d give you +until Wednesday, so of course we will. We will bring the books around +to-night anyway, and go over them, as we planned; you can’t afford to +lose any time. And talk to your wife about it, she’s a sensible +woman—and one who longs, like all the rest of ’em, for more than she’s +got,” he added to himself, with cynical satisfaction. + +“Martin is watching us now,” he continued, waving his hand over toward +the other side of the boat, where a slight, insignificant-looking man +with small features and a large, bulging forehead lifted his hand in an +answering gesture. “You’d never think, to look at him, that he was what +he is; he has more brains in his little finger than I have in my whole +head.” Leverich spoke with evident sincerity. “I’m just a plain man of +business, but Foster’s a genius. He fixed on you from the start. Hello, +we’re ’most in already.” + +The crowd from the rear cabin had begun to push through the passageway +and surge to the front of the boat, which was still some distance from +the dock. The man next them folded up his paper, and Justin and Leverich +rose mechanically and stood amid the throng, which became more and more +compact every moment. + +Suddenly both men started as they looked back at the fresh accessions to +the crowd, and pushed sideways, falling behind a little to get in line +with a tall and slender young woman with pink roses in a black hat, and +a dotted veil that emphasized her rich coloring. She raised her head as +a voice beside her said: + +“Good evening, Mrs. Alexander!” + +“Oh, is that you, Mr. Leverich? How do you do? I haven’t met a soul I +knew on the boat until this moment, and now I see six people. Oh, +Justin!” She had faced around as a hand was laid on her arm, and stood +looking up at him with happily surprised eyes, while he smiled back at +her with a slight flush on his own cheek. “I was looking for you all the +time,” she said. + +The sudden and unexpected meeting of husband and wife has a singular +element in it—it is somewhat like unconsciously approaching a mirror in +which one views a stranger who turns out to be one’s self. That swift +and impersonal view gives an impression as a whole that can be reached +in no other way. Lois Alexander noticed at once that her husband’s +clothes needed brushing, and that the velvet collar of his overcoat was +worn at the edges—she had hardly seen the coat this year except as he +was putting it on or taking it off. It gave her a slight shock to see +that the tired lines around his eyes made his face look older than she +was accustomed to think of it. He, for his part, experienced the same +slight shock in looking at her; he saw the little imperfections in her +face, and the roses in her hat appeared to him perhaps too pink and +girlish. Yet through all this there was an indescribable thrill of happy +possession and loving admiration of each other, touchingly sweet, and +all the tenderer for the hint of passing years. Among all the men +around, Justin was the king; among all women, she was the most +desirable. + +After the expected sensations of the usual home greeting and the +accustomed kiss, it gave a spice to intimacy to meet perforce as +strangers. She leaned partly against him as she talked to Mr. Leverich, +and he pressed her arm with his strong fingers under cover of her cloak +and made the color come and go in her cheek; her eyes mutely implored +him to stop, and he enjoyed her confusion. Husband and wife looked well +together, in a certain vitality of movement and expression common to +both which made others instinctively turn to observe them. + +“I have been trying to discover my husband all the way across,” she +complained to Leverich. “I was sure that he was on this boat. Why didn’t +you look out for me, Justin?” + +“You didn’t say you were going in town to-day,” he expostulated. + +“How often have I told you to look out for me? I am likely to go in at +any time. I had to get some things for the children. Have you—have you +seen anyone to-day?” She spoke disconnectedly, as conscious as a girl of +the disconcerting pressure on her arm. + +“No—oh, yes; I saw Eugene Larue this morning, he’s back from the other +side.” + +“Did he say when he would be out?” + +“No.” + +“Did you ask him?” + +“No. The fact is, Lois, I only saw him for a moment and I never thought +about it.” + +“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference. I wanted to speak to you about +Theodosia; I’ve had a letter, and she’s coming. We are going to have a +young lady as a visitor this winter,” she added formally in explanation +to Mr. Leverich, who still stood at her elbow. “She’s coming up North to +study music; she’s very pretty, I believe, and clever.” + +“A relation?” hazarded Mr. Leverich. + +“Yes; she’s a young cousin of mine—I haven’t seen her since she was a +child. It will be so pleasant to have a girl in the house.” + +“You like company,” he returned approvingly, “my wife does, too; we +always have a houseful. She says I show off better when we have +visitors—can’t let my angry passions rise. By the way, Alexander, what +time shall I bring the books over to-night?” + +Lois Alexander’s startled, questioning glance sought her husband’s, and +his gave a gravely confidential assent before he answered: + +“Any time you say.” + +“Will eight o’clock be too early?” + +“No, that will suit me very well.” + +“Well, good-by!” He took off his hat in farewell to Lois, and +disappeared in the crowd, as his broad shoulders forced a sinuous +passage through the throng. + +“How are the children?” Justin asked his wife. + +“They’re all right.” She paused, and then said: “If you are to look over +those books, I suppose we can’t go to the Calenders’ to-night.” + +“No.” The dark line of the pier struck athwart the dusky light and +divided the windows in two. “At least, I cannot, but there’s no reason +why you shouldn’t go.” + +“You know that I will not go without you.” + +“Other women do.” + +“Well, _I_ will not.” + +“What a foolish girl!” His tone was fond. “Then—_take_ care!” The boat +had bumped into the dock; in the struggling press of the stampeding +crowd, Lois clung to her husband’s arm and he strove to ward off the +crush from her. When they were at last over the gang-plank, joining in +the hurrying, straggling procession toward the train, he looked at her +with tender solicitude. + +“You shouldn’t come out on the boat so late as this. Was it too much for +you?” + +“Oh, no, no! I do this alone lots of times.” She felt so vividly happy +that her breathlessness was hardly an annoyance as they dodged in front +of the incoming drays of another boat and waved aside the impeding +newsboys crying the evening papers. + +She foresaw that they would be separated in the train, and found voice +enough to whisper to him: + +“Are you to decide to-night?” + +“I have virtually decided now.” + +“To accept?” + +“Yes.” + +Her breath came suddenly; with the monosyllable an electric wave had set +the pulses of both tingling. The spoken word had not failed of its +wonted power; it had at this moment opened a gate hitherto closed. Both +husband and wife felt their feet at last set on the great highroad of +modern romance, the road to wealth, along which ride daily, as of old, +knights in armor, duly caparisoned, with shield and spear, bent, not on +deeds of chivalry, but on one glittering quest—a grim pathway, veiled +by a golden haze. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +It was a mighty hour. Justin, sitting by the open window with his head +upon his hand, looking out into the night, saw but dimly the pale +shining of the familiar stars, in the search for the rising star of his +own future. It was far on in the small hours, and he had not yet slept, +although he had come up-stairs at twelve o’clock with the firm intention +of undressing and going to bed at once. He had, instead, dropped down +into the wicker chair in the unlighted sitting-room to think for a few +moments—and a few moments—and a few moments more. + +The dining-table which he had left was filled with sheets of paper +covered with fine figures, and his mind at first continually reverted to +them, multiplying, subtracting, and correcting with keen facility, and +with infinitesimal changes in the final result, which he knew, +notwithstanding, could be only approximate, no matter how painstakingly +his fancy strove to render it exact. + +After a while, however, other thoughts asserted themselves. The vast +influences of the night were around him as from the deep places of the +universe—the depth of dusky gloom, the depth of silence. The window +looked out over a garden, but in this dusky gloom it had lost the +semblance of earth and seemed, instead, but the under part of an +enveloping cloud in which he was the only breathing human life. The +vague dark branches of the trees waving across the lesser darkness spoke +of even deeper mystery in their mute witness to that breath from the +unseen which moved them. + +It was not the problem of the universe of which all this spoke to Justin +Alexander, though as such it had been part and parcel of his questioning +youth. The days when he might have sung with Omar were gone with those +speculative midnight hours, the foregathering with death, the conscious +search for higher meanings, the effort to solve the unknowable; whatever +philosophy was evolved from those journeys into the dark was labeled and +put away on a remote shelf, where the mind occasionally reverted to it +with a sigh of thoughtful possession, but for which there was no longer +any daily use. There was even a chance that on bringing the precious +package out into the modern daylight it might be found to have changed +its color entirely. + +The problem of his own life was what this hour held in its shifting hold +for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines on which he gazed seemed to +prefigure the uncertain boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a +family, the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, even +though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space. + +The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for +six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this +moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing +calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with +a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of +responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, +depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he +had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not +now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years +piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of +it. + +In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed +before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty +longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of +mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest +sympathy. His wife—she was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her +utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one +who lived in an alien sphere. His children—he loved them fondly, but +the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he +could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his rôle of +provider—neither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the +rest of freedom. + +Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the +inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire +for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his +fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank +under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the +brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or +question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, +but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the +warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under +his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the +long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the +stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, +careless day! + +The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him +to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, +without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked +beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, +and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now +with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched +his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been +freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he +sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His +roaming fancy—— + +“Are you up still?” + +Justin started—it was the voice of his wife. He came back to the +familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so +instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; +they became already as though they had never been as he answered: + +“Yes; I couldn’t have slept if I had gone to bed.” + +“But you’re all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing +in on you!” + +Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around +his neck. + +“Shut the window at once! You’re so imprudent. You must remember that it +isn’t summer now.” + +She lent herself to his embrace for a moment. + +“Do you know how late it is?” + +“No, and I don’t want to. Let’s sit here together for a little while, +I’m unspeakably wide awake! I’ll make up a little fire for a few minutes +and we’ll have a midnight talk.” + +She laughed with evident pleasure. “Well!” + +He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth, +lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame +brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he +leaned forward—the light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set +mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her +bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he +turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and +wavered and fell around her. + +It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the +parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic +wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of +social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of +fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with +banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to +abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her +knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with +her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her +pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern +illustration of youthful motherhood. + +She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her +form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft +whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly +colored—her lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed +starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now, +unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual +expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of +herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you. + +She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward +watching the blaze in a new absorption. + +“I know you’re thinking of the new venture.” + +“Yes; it’s a good deal to think of.” + +“I should say so!” She caught her breath admiringly. “I listened to you +and those men talking to-night until I couldn’t stand it a moment +longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy!” + +“They won’t drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish,” said +Justin emphatically. + +“But I thought it was all settled that you _could_!” + +“Oh, yes—on paper. Everything looks all right there—and it shall be, +too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow +for differences. I know the machine is good—I don’t take any chances on +that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market +all the time to compete with; we haven’t a monopoly.” + +“Well, you can make your prices lower than the others,” she suggested +brightly. + +“Oh, yes, of course,” he explained with patience, “but if we put prices +too low there’s no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though; +we’ve got to be seen doing business, even if it’s at a loss. That’s what +the fifty thousand’s for—to tide us over just such a time.” + +“It is a great deal to have to pay back,” she said anxiously, leaning +forward to throw a small log on the fire. “I don’t like you to saddle +yourself with such a debt. I don’t like it!” + +What weighed on him most—the personal care and responsibility—made no +impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large +ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the +exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a +woman’s horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate +business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace. + +“I wish you could get along without the money.” + +“I’m glad enough to have it,” he replied. “Rest assured, Lois, if they +didn’t think me worth it they wouldn’t lend it to me—they expect big +interest on their investment.” + +“And is our living to come out of it, too?” + +“Oh, yes—until there’s an income.” + +“How much will you take?” + +“Oh, no fixed sum—just as little as we can get along with at present. +We’ll go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our +feet.” + +“Indeed, I’ll economize!” She clasped her hands earnestly. “There are +only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we can’t do +without. After that we’ll need next to nothing. This rug, for +instance—it’s in rags, I’m ashamed to bring anyone up here—but that +won’t cost much, and we’ve _got_ to get one for the front hall; it isn’t +decent. And I’ll have to buy the children’s winter clothing before it +gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last +year’s coat looks like a ruffle.” + +“Oh, of course, get what is needed,” said the father resignedly. “Some +money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you +can.” + +She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back +her lost ground. + +“Ah, don’t let’s leave the fire yet,” she pleaded, as he made a motion +to rise. “I want to sit here a few minutes more, and it’s going to blaze +up so beautifully! It’s so seldom that we ever really get a chance to +talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this +way. I’ve hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill—a man +with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children +and for me you would have left the place long ago.” + +“If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it +now,” he answered gently. + +“Yes, I know. It’s been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately, +I’ve seen how worried you were. Dear, I don’t want to be a drag; I want +to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can.” + +“You always help me.” + +“Ah, no, I don’t; _I_ feel it, though you may not.” She paused, and went +on again with a tremulous note in her voice: “Justin, I miss you so much +sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadn’t seen you +at all!” + +“You see all there is of me,” said Justin tersely. “How many times a +year do I go out of an evening without you?” + +“Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the +servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you +come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I +don’t get any chance at all. You _never_ ask me anything, or notice when +I don’t feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit +up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill +and I not know it?” + +“No, I suppose not,” said Justin. “But I’m afraid you’ll have another +headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois.” + +“No, I will not!” She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a +bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it +filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly +wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had +broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely. + +She tried to speak evenly as she said: “I didn’t mean that to sound as +if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make +things—different.” + +She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer +to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she +had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain +girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his +gaze. + +It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years +seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it +still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to +act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To +live one’s own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest +that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the +large known phenomena of nature. + +Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten +years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed +upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century—life must be +nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of +wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one’s inner limit of youth +lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of +themselves as young married people with a future all to come. + +The tender proprietorship of Justin’s caress was more comforting to Lois +than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame +as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his +shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind +preoccupied with divergent claims. + +The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half +nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It +was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always +felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to +walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by +the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys—a +doll’s cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the +window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive +stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter +domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of +the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a +heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a +silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more +or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the +wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a +bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor +were picture-books and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to speak of +the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of +man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar +upon his hearthstone. + +[Illustration: _They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of +flame_] + +Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of +character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for +her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to +have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most +unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the +thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her +lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her +estimate of him—the honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of +disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of +those he liked, the love of her—all were there; but she was beginning +gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that shining +outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and +preference and habit of which she knew nothing—only as time went on did +she begin to perceive the extent of it. + +Those disappointing moments when they were not in accord—whole days +sometimes dropped out of the week—left a void which no caresses filled. +It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed. +Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of +those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship of wedlock, are a +thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing +moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but +evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She +could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually +seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some +larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines +became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had +held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was +always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything +was more or less upsetting,—marriage, babies, sickness, +housekeeping,—years when domestic situations changed their shape daily, +an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an +entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the +servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There +were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone +to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him, +after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end; +when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started +off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did +not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to +find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a +contradiction to everything that she had ever been before. + +The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a +revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night, +was lacking. + +When she spoke again it was to say: “When do you take the new place?” + +“Next month.” + +“I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will you go in on a +later train in the mornings, dear?” + +“I’ll take an earlier one.” + +“But then you’ll come out sooner in the afternoon?” + +“I’ll come out much later.” + +“Oh, oh!” she sighed, with the prevision of long hours of loneliness for +herself. + +“At least, you can take more than that miserable two weeks’ holiday in +the summer.” + +“My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. You don’t +understand; I’ve got to work.” + +There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and the room had sunk +into partial obscurity. She was the first to speak, as before, +conquering anew the tremulousness in her voice: + +“Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next month?” + +“Yes. How long is she to stay?” + +“For all winter. She’s to study music, you remember?” + +“For all winter!” He sat up straight with the emphasis of his words. +“Why, where will you put her?” + +“Oh, I’ll manage that. But I do wish we had a larger house; this is +maddening sometimes.” + +“Perhaps we’ll be able to build some day.” + +“Oh, if we could really have our own house!” + +She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that future which is the +summit of good to suburban dwellers, when the contracted space of a +rented house can be changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible +closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout. + +“I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the loveliest things +to-day in town.” + +Already the thought of brass and mahogany and Oriental rugs, rich in +texture and delicious in coloring, filled her mind. + +To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession of money +meant the opportunity to buy; the possession of yet more money would +mean more opportunity to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the +ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with ease and +promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most American husbands in his +station, the sum spent upon house and family far exceeded in ratio his +own personal expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually +looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented to him +pre-eminently further business possibilities, the power to play +competently in the great game, with the result of a sufficient provision +for his wife and children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at +the thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in this next +year—— + +“Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go to town Friday, or +wait until next month?” asked Lois suddenly. + +“You had better wait,” said Justin, with decision. He rose, and added: +“You must go to bed, Lois.” + +She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially. + +“Good night.” + +“You are not going to sit up later!” + +“Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for something in +this paper I forgot to notice earlier.” + +He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he must stay for a +brief space beyond the sound of her voice. + +“Now, don’t wait another moment, or you’ll get cold.” He spoke +authoritatively. “The fire’s almost out.” + +He had already turned from her, and was sitting down by the dim flicker +of the newly lighted candle, absorbed once more in figures, with the +newspaper before him. The midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; +both experienced the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows +time-worn and trivial conversation. + +Lois’ pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she left the room; +but after a slight interval she returned with a gliding step and softly +placed a fresh log upon the dull red embers of the dying fire, and +fanned them noiselessly until a flame leaped out again, holding her +white draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling across +her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful self-forgetting smile +shone out and became a part of the light around him before she vanished +once more through the doorway. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, plush-covered seat of the +sleeping-car, with her hands folded in her lap, looking out of the +window at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green rows of +cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of scrub-oak and pine, +dotted here and there with gray cabins, around which negroes, little and +big, in scanty garments were grouped to watch the train go by; +occasionally it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a +wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced by no name for +the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic legend, “Southern Express +Company,” on a swinging board at one end. It was before these ultimate +days when factories are springing up all over the new South, and she had +not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their staring yellow +frames by the side of the muddy streams; only the cotton-fields and the +scrub-oaks ran along by the train, with the view of the blue mountains +here and there, and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had +never seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world outside +of her home. + +There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, as that +of the girl who is supposed to be contented with the little rounds of +household life. Dosia’s mother had died when she was a small child, but +so much love and care had been given her by relatives and by her father, +a professor in a small college and a gentle and good man, that she had +never felt the loss. When she was twelve years old her father married +again, and, on account of his failing health, they moved from their home +in the West to the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small +income which he already possessed, to engage in some industry suitable +to his limited powers; but in the enervating climate he gradually lost +all ambition and business habits. He became yellow in complexion and +slouching as to appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than +before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the loungers around +the village store or the new people from the North who came to learn the +methods pertaining to cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything +should be done. + +He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always placid and +amiable, and only regretting, as he continually affirmed, that he could +not provide for the family as he should. The children, of whom there +were four by this second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, +who was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, and almost as +self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother had from the first +attached herself to Dosia, whom she treated even at that early stage of +life less as a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all +emergencies. + +Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period in her existence +the unthinking content of childhood had left her. It was natural to live +in the small, poorly built house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with +broken fences, with small children to dress and care for and a baby to +be tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, with a +continual desultory striving after a refinement of dress and living that +was never accomplished. It was a matter of course to be always “clearing +up,” yet never in order, and to be always economizing temporarily in +view of the stated remittance which never could be used for paying +anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia was a sweet-natured +child, affectionate and helpful, with a healthy constitution which made +work unnoticeable, and she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned +way according to the views of her elders, without criticism or comment. +Her education, although desultory, had been fairly good, depending +partly on teachers who came from the North and stayed in Balderville for +their health, and partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well +as culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he felt like it; +for that, as everything else, was a matter of inclination with him and +not of duty. She was fond of reading, and had also somewhat of a talent +for music, which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results +with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she had been +well taught at the beginning. + +Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent order that +obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors was bad or good, +according to the year, like the peaches or cotton. With some of these +visitors Dosia formed eager, transitory friendships, but with others +there could be no assimilation. There were a few nice families settled +in the place, more or less bound together by a community of interest +centering in Balderville and the future of their children, who were +usually sent away to school when half grown. + +Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing faculties of its +own—a terrible clear-sightedness, for one thing, and a black-and-white +ruled-out sense of justice and injustice; it brought an absolutely new +sense of values to Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to +dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked upon as +entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and stepmother, were +really the inevitable expressions of law. She saw that the true +character of her parents was quite different from their own idea of it; +that they would never change materially, and therefore, in the very +nature of things, their fortunes could never change materially; they +would always be going a little faster or a little slower on a down +grade. She wondered at the exhaustless capacity of complacently +believing in worn fallacies which her young eyes saw pitilessly as such. +Her stepmother still looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as +a successful and energetic man of business for the moment only disabled +by his failing health, and believed herself to be always on the point of +managing the little money they had with superhuman economy, so that it +would cover all household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could +never be more money, and that what there was must always slip away. This +knowledge laid the future waste and rendered effort futile. What was the +use, for instance, of putting cushions on the lounge over the place +where there was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new +one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of pretending that +when the cracked and heterogeneous plates and dishes were replaced the +table would be properly set once more? They never would be replaced. + +If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered +her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a +little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and +there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to +the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the +older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be +spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The +young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and +childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always +said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they “went +together,” and arrangements were made in view of this known fact +whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never “gone with” +anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor +staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and +picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked +and took care of the children, and read, and found her father’s +walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went +on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why +should she not be? + +[Illustration: _Theodosia_] + +But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after +the day’s work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children +played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each +other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were +contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own +discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself +which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she +was nobly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didn’t know +how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the +advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had +listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was +ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served +after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living. + +Many a night—like many another girl!—Dosia sat in the window of her +shelving attic room, bathed in the golden moonlight, with her hair +falling on her shoulders and her hands clasped before her, a picture for +none to see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were around her. +The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! In vain she tried to stem +it. She longed inexpressibly for that outer world, of which she had +read, where youth was a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, +clever, self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old régime +where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to learn more +about many things,—she longed to study music,—but she felt no +inspiration and no desire for the life of an artist; she was, in fact, +just a girl, who longed with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less +intensely, for the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, +the excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little daily +delights, and—love. She dimly discerned unknown glories that made her +breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed of some one in the far future who +would be very good and very noble, whose love would hold her to +everything that was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove +herself extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, and whose +hand on hers would set her heart beating. She imagined pouring out her +heart to him,—that heart which seemed to be forever shut in her breast +now, with none to understand it, none to care,—going to him with all +these doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the blessedness +of his response. “You darling,” he would say, “don’t you know I was +loving you all the time? We neither of us knew each other, to be sure, +but the love was there all the same; it had existed since the beginning +of the world.” + +She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy which affects not +only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, and which does not need +iron as a curative power so much as a legitimate and healthy excitement. +Even Mrs. Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and showed +listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors had openly +commented on the fact; she said placidly that she was really worried +about Dosia, and wished that she could have a change. And then one of +those impossible, wonderful things happened which alter the whole +surface of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia was to +go to New York to study music, and spend the winter with a married +cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of the suburbs. + +Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, dressed in a new suit +of blue serge, which had been sent from Atlanta, to fit her measure, +with the rest of her traveling outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, +with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the +seat, and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the +fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess. + +Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of +choice—bleared and shapeless in effect from much “making over,” as +purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for +such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she +almost felt as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with +the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted perfume +of the suède gloves was subtly intoxicating. She took furtive glimpses +of herself in the glass panel beside her, and the sight filled her with +a delighted wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so +much like other people. + +It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her face; she had that +exaggerated idea of the importance of dress which belongs to people who +have never been able to exercise their taste or fancy for +it—particularly those who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet +was like a picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she cared +little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthful—just a girl’s +face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, when the color varied in +it with the moment. She had blue eyes, a good mouth with a short upper +lip, white teeth, and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert +look in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; her +slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her lips parted +unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, with her varying color, +gave her a charm. + +But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless expression +of extreme youth which experience has never touched, which has nothing +to remember and nothing to forget—the typical fair white page, still +unwritten upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday. + +When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family +group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, +with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn +hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and +unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a +large brass safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted +children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, +brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing +kisses with the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The elders +had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled remorsefully at the +thought; she had been so shamelessly glad to go! And yet, she did love +them. Mingled with a sense of kindness was also a strange little +disappointment—she felt that when they turned homeward with their backs +to the train they would let her slip out of their lives with the same +ease with which they had accustomed themselves to let other things go, +with a selfish inertia too deep to feel anything long. Only the +baby—little Rolf—he would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a +while, for his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her arms +yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of latent motherhood +unknown to her placid stepmother. It was characteristic of this girl, +who was tired of taking care of children, that the fact of there being a +two-year-old baby also at her cousin’s house seemed now its crowning +attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations about the +darling. + +After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of traveling, +blurred out the past for her. She was journeying to the life that was +hers by right; the luxurious appointments of the car, her own new +elegance, began to seem a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, +indeed, she had been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card +offered her by the white-aproned colored waiter and selected her dinner +as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing it that she thought +he had forgotten it; but at last he brought the meal, and she ate it +from the table which he had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; +there was an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act +which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence. +Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, and took off her +jacket, and made herself comfortable, as she saw others had done. The +car was by no means crowded, and she had seen from the first that there +was no one who could serve as a peg to hang a romance on—only +middle-aged women and men, and a mother with half-grown children. She +fell to wondering, as she had done many times before, what her cousins +would be like; she was prepared to love them dearly. With the +unconscious egotism of her age, everything in this new life was to +revolve around her. The other players were accessories—she was the star +performer. + +The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and dark, of green and +shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered white houses and rounded +overhanging slopes that shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamed—and +dreamed. Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush +and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and impalpable +cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the berths were made up, +people sitting the while in tired, silent groups in other sections, +holding on to cloaks and hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind +the curtains. Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the +brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and then lay down +at last without removing any clothing, with both hands tucked under her +soft cheek and her eyes staring before her. There had been a bustle of +walking to and fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while +all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward a little when +the train went suddenly around a curve. Gradually those wide-open blue +eyes began to close; she seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on +pillows of roseate down, between waking and sleeping; and then—_God in +heaven_! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, helpless +terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching her, beating her +against the planks, jamming her into awful darkness as if she were a +creature without bone or sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself +among the other voices shrieking. A plunge, and then—nothing. + +The night was inky black, and the wind that swept down the gorge brought +an occasional raindrop with it. Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long +while after that she heard voices, then a man’s hand was passed over her +face and a voice close above her said, “It is a woman,” and added, +bending still nearer to her, “Can you speak?” + +Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; instead, she broke +into a helpless sobbing in which there were no tears. The man spoke to +some one near, and she became aware that there were other sounds of +talking and distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light +twinkled and disappeared. + +Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting her head gently, +placed something soft under it. His touch was compassionate, and his +tone still more so as he said: + +“Are you in much pain?” + +She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke for her. She +wanted to question him, but could not. He seemed to divine her thought. + +“Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you wonder where you are. +There has been a terrible accident—the trestle gave way, and one car +fell down here; the others, I believe, smashed farther up somewhere. +People are coming to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do +now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do just as I tell +you? Move your right foot—yes, there—now your left—now this arm—now +the other. Why, that’s brave of you!”—as she tried to raise herself a +little. “Perhaps you will be able to stand soon.” He broke off suddenly +with a groan: “I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to Heaven I +had! but there’s not a drop left in the flask.” + +The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, and the sounds +of moving and confusion around increased. The lights Dosia had seen +above seemed to get nearer, and then twinkled down close to the wreck; +but even then, in the opaque blackness of the night, they remained only +isolated points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they +dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered and went backward +and forward; with them came more voices and stumbling feet, sounds half +swallowed by the depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of +wind. + +Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the fleeting flash +of a lantern above her revealed that there was no one beside her; it was +like being dropped again into nothingness. She did not know how long she +lay there. With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, +though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised her to a +sitting position, and held her there, with her head resting against the +shoulder of this new-found friend. “Drink this—all of it. I want to see +if you can stand after a few moments, and perhaps walk—there are so few +stretchers.” Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder. + +“No, I will not leave you”—he spoke as one would to a little child, as +she made a faint, terrified motion to hold his arm—“I will not leave +you. I will take you every step of the way. You are a girl, aren’t you? +Were you alone on the train? Had you no friends with you?” + +She whispered with some difficulty, “No one.” + +“You are perhaps spared much.” There was a silence. Presently he said +gently: “We must not wait here too long; we must follow the +lanterns—see, they are going. You can stand; now try and walk. Give me +your hand—that way. Lean on me. Take one step—now another. Come! Don’t +be afraid—you _must_.” + +With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost carrying her, she +essayed to walk. Shaking at each step pitifully at first, then growing +stronger, with one hand locked in his, she found herself ascending the +rocky path of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The +lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel into which the +light was walled solidly. He was leading her along the railroad-ties. As +she stumbled from time to time, she became formlessly conscious that he +winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from +falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering +grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such +a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly. + +He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously. +“What’s the matter?” + +“I’m hurting you.” + +“Not more than I can stand. Don’t stop to talk about it; we mustn’t fall +behind. Hold my hand fast.” + +The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the +wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were +all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, +endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the +protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand—a strong, clean touch, +that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With +her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that +she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he +knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow +as one in the unspoken comforting of trust. + +Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses’ +hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them. +Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were +others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, +carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with +whom she had exchanged no word of farewell. + +She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she +lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But +through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all +the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, +unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of +which is her greatest good on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had +begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession +of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing +of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at +an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in +consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had +been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory +and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It +was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce +in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction +which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he +propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; +his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of +regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry +to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow +any more. + +But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a +man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty +thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly +pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that +character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he +insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his +overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had +certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is +first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did +not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated +itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his +closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in +it. It is the transmutation of metal into the blood—the revivifying +power which the seekers after the philosopher’s stone recognized so +thoroughly. + +He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, +and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a +newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel +undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by +with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager +look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening +condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the +wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and +concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energy—an +energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as +a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it. + +His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall +Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries +which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and +filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, +being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small +wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used +to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls +in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they +walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and +damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one +of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river. + +As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, +and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly +did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, +loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the +entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes +of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard +the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, +moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street +came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and +looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward +and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, +pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out +around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, +but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories +there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron +railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; +basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted +vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; +attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in +the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, +was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering +high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those +below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich. + +Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences—the +houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses +again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began +to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships’ +stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that +attracted Justin’s particular attention, wedged in as it was between the +taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen +by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; +the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrance—a relic +of bygone days—had only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black +hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so +near the street that it was easy to see into the front room—an interior +so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it. + +The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a +brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing +the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly +covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps +stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken +remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth +sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give +that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who +gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen +and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the +human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a +momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up, +half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye +of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered +suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had +turned into this street from Broadway. + +The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comradeship +which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and +hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was +now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent +reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of +the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name +conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily, +and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the +point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in +response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling +his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of +proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome +pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning. + +The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off +near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side +were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the +lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory; +from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery. +The larger parts of the instrument—the copper tubing and the steel +bars—were bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper +functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were +manufactured. + +The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine +invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a +manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly +to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during +which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New +York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in +construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various +cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment. +Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of +timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, +seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard +Typometer—so called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of +elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it. +The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite +attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They +said all it needed now was push. + +Thousands of little books entitled “Sixty Seconds with the Typometer” +had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive +brevity, and in large black print that could be read without glasses, +Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you +could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers, +in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate. + +The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the +renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its +future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory +was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been +associated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear +ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly +man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had +been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the +requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justin’s services +would have been needed at all. + +As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman +stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a +slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that +drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, +muscular arms. + +To Justin’s pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of +pleasure in his eyes: + +“Good morning, sir. I’m glad to see you here so early. You’ve perhaps +heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati.” + +“No,” said Justin; “I came up here first. That’s good news, Bullen.” + +“Yes, sir. I’ve made a list of the stock we’ll need as soon as we can +get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. I’ll want to +see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men.” + +“Very well,” said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the +office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the +assistant manager. + +“And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander,” he said. + +They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one, +it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified +ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this +first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin +and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had +weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He +meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best. +If orders came in every day like this—and why should they not? if not +now, at least in the near future—— + +The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell +of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as +one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by +the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully +absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the +master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been +furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the +store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it. +Afterwards—— + +“By the way, Harker,” he asked once, in an interval of waiting, “what is +the concern across the street?” + +“It’s much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander.” + +Justin looked up, surprised. “I never knew that.” + +“Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; it’s the +Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after a fashion—not as +good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs horribly after you’ve worked it +for a while. They’ve got one in the billiard-room around the corner.” + +“And this Mr. Cater—has he been in the business long?” + +“He was here when we came, two years ago.” + +Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a decent place for +luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was hardly surprised, when he +seated himself by a little white table in a small, rather dark room, to +look up and recognize opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L. +Cater. + +“I was wondering how soon you’d find this place out,” said the latter. +He spoke with a Southern drawl. “You don’t get a very large repertoire +here, but what they do give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and +that’s an art. And it’s clean.” + +“Yes,” said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to be usually +spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more social feeling toward +those who let him alone, but even the shadows of this golden day were +translucent. + +“I reckon you know who I am—Angevin L. Cater. Angevin’s a queer name, +isn’t it? French—several generations back.” + +To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was required. After a +moment Mr. Cater began again: + +“Perhaps you think it’s strange—my speaking to you in this way. Of +course I’ve seen you coming to Number 270, and knew that you were taking +charge there, but that’s not the whole of it. I’m from Georgia—got a +wife and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville now.” He paused +to give this impressive fact full weight. “You’ve some relatives there, +haven’t you, by the name of Linden?” + +“My wife has,” said Justin, with new attention. + +“Well, I reckon I heard of you some this fall when I was home. Miss +Theodosia was talking of spending the winter North with you, she asked +me if I knew Mr. Justin Alexander, and I had to tell her no. I didn’t +think I’d meet up with you so soon. Heard from her lately?” + +“We expect Miss Linden to-morrow,” said Justin. “How is Mr. Linden +getting on? We haven’t heard very good accounts of him lately.” + +“Oh, Linden’s a mighty fine man; he ain’t successful, that’s all. I find +a heap of mighty fine men that ain’t successful, don’t you? I don’t +think it’s anything against a man that he ain’t successful. Besides, old +man Linden ain’t got his health; you can’t do anything if you haven’t +got your health. His wife’s a mighty fine lady—pretty, too; but she +ain’t much on dressin’ up; stays at home and takes care of her children. +And Miss Dosia—well, Miss Dosia’s a peach. Talented, too—I tell you, +she can bang the ivories! But she’s been kinder pinin’ lately; I reckon +she needs a change—though a change isn’t always what it’s cracked up to +be. I’ve found that out, haven’t you? I changed into a New York business +two years ago, and it’s taken all my strength to buck up against it till +now. I reckon maybe it’ll carry me along all right—now.” + +“You’re in the same line that I am, I understand,” said Justin, who had +been eating while the other talked. + +“Why, yes, you might call it that, I guess both machines started in +Connecticut. A cousin of mine owned one, he said Warford stole his idea +and got it patented first—I don’t know. When he died he left me what +money he had, and I took up the concern. I’ve got a Yankee side to me as +well as a Southern side; sometimes I get tuckered out tryin’ to combine +’em.” + +“You say that trade is looking up now?” asked Justin. + +“Well, yes, it is. The public is beginning to learn the value of time as +recorded by the timoscript.” His eyes twinkled. “Our machine is put +together better than the Warford. I feel it my duty to say that, Mr. +Alexander. It’s simpler, for one thing—there ain’t so many little cogs +to catch and get out of order. No complex mechanism; a child can run +it—that’s what my circulars say. I believe in advertising, same as you; +I don’t object to your booming trade. The more people there are, now, +who know there is a time-machine, the more there’ll be to find they’ve +had a long-felt want for one, no matter what you call it. And—you +shouldn’t hurry over your luncheon so, Mr. Alexander,” for Justin had +thrown down his napkin and was rising. + +“I’ve got to be back at the office by two,” said Justin, glancing at the +clock, which showed five minutes of the hour. + +“Oh, you can walk it in three minutes; but of course you’re not down to +that yet. I’m glad to have met up with you, sir, and I hope to see you +often. I reckon this town’s big enough for two of a kind.” + +“Thank you,” said Justin, glad to escape. He had been telling himself +during the conversation that he would take care to avoid Mr. Angevin L. +Cater’s favorite haunt for the future, but he was surprised to find a +change gradually stealing over him after he had left the man. There are +some persons, distinctly agreeable at first, whose absence materializes +an unexpected aversion to their further acquaintance; others, whose +company one has found tedious, leave a wholesome flavor, after all, +behind them. Mr. Cater appeared to be of the latter class. Justin found +himself smiling with real kindness once or twice as he thought of his +opposite neighbor. + +But there was little time for turning aside during the afternoon—the +evening as well as the morning were component parts of that golden day. +The orders that came in gave a wonderful effect of luck, although they +were largely the legitimate outcome of well-planned efforts. Justin +thought the work of the last six months was bringing its fulfillment +now, but this clear stream of accomplishment showed him the way to a +mighty ocean. Power, power, power! The sense of it was in his +finger-ends as he focused his mind on world-embracing schemes; with that +impelling current of strength, he could have turned even failure to +success, and he knew it. + +The hours were all too short for transacting the business that had to be +done, and for all the consultations as to ways and means. It would take +some time to put these preparations on a larger scale. + +Justin was ready to leave at six o’clock, with a bundle of price-lists +under his arm to look over when he got home. The last mail was handed to +him just as he was locking his desk. + +“There is no use in my looking over these to-night, Harker,” he said. +“You can get at them the first thing in the morning. I will be down even +earlier than to-day. Stay—” His eye had caught sight of an envelope +with the name of a well-known Chicago firm on it. He tore it open, ran +his eye rapidly over the contents, and then handed it, with a gesture as +of abdication, to Harker. The bookkeeper was the first to break the +silence. + +“I thought we were getting along pretty rapidly to-day,” he said, “but +it seems that we haven’t even started. This tops all! We’ll have to get +a big move on, Mr. Alexander. They’re giving us very short time.” + +“Yes,” said Justin. He lingered irresolutely, and then laid down his +papers with the hat which he held ready to put on, and went over to the +safe. He took from it five new ten-dollar bills and tucked them into his +waistcoat pocket. They sent a glow to his heart, for they were intended +as a little gift to his wife; it seemed to him that this last good +fortune had given him the right to make her a visible sharer in it. + +As he ran up the steps of his home, he collided with a small boy who was +holding a bicycle with one hand and proffering a yellow envelope through +the open doorway with an outstretched arm. Lois was taking it. She and +Justin read the telegram at the same moment, before it fell fluttering +to the ground between them, as both hands dropped it. + +“I cannot possibly go,” he said, staring at her. + +“Oh, Justin! I will, then—some one _must_.” + +“No, no, _you_ can’t; that’s nonsense. Great heavens! for this to come +at such a time!” He broke off again, staring helplessly before him. +Leverich was in St. Louis, Martin at his home ill. “Why didn’t the girl +start last week, as she intended?” + +“Oh, the poor child—don’t blame _her_. The accident must have been so +terrible!” + +“Yes—yes, indeed.” He sat down in the hall chair, while his wife signed +the telegraph-book which the boy incidentally held open for her as he +chewed gum. When she finished, she saw that Justin was pouring over the +time-table in an evening paper; he laid it down to say: + +“If I start back for town in ten minutes I can catch the eight-thirty +train south, and get home again to-morrow night or the morning after, if +Theodosia is able to travel. That will only make me lose one day.” One +day! He shook his head in bitter impatience. + +“Oh, I hate to have you go in this way! Shall I send word to the office +for you?” + +“No; I’ll write some telegrams on the way in. I’ll run up-stairs and put +a few things in the bag, and kiss the children good night—I hear them +calling.” He put his hand in his pocket and hurriedly drew out the crisp +roll of bills, and looked at them ruefully. + +“I brought this money for you, Lois, but I’ll have to take it with me, +I’m afraid, for I might run short.” He put his arm around her for a +brief instant, in answer to her exclamation. “No, don’t get me anything +to eat; I haven’t time, I tell you. I’ll get what I want later, on the +train.” In the strong irritation which he was curbing he felt as if he +would never want to eat again. He was in reality by nature both kind and +compassionate, but the worst sting of trouble lies often in the fact +that it is so inopportune. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +“Are we near New York?” + +“Yes,” said Justin, smiling encouragement at his young companion. He +stood up and took down from the rack above them Dosia’s jacket, which +had been reclaimed from the wreck soaked and torn, and a boy’s cap in +lieu of her missing hat. + +“You had better put these on now, and then you can rest again for a +little while before we have to move.” + +It was unavoidable that after the enforced journey the sight of Dosia’s +white face and imploring eyes should have filled him with a rush of +tender compassion which completely blotted out the previous reluctance +from his memory. Few men spend their time regretting past stages of +thought, and he had naturally accepted her tremulous thankfulness for +his solicitude. + +After the long day of travel in Justin’s company, the color had begun to +return faintly to Dosia’s lips and cheeks. She was also growing to feel +a little more at home with him; he had seemed too much a stranger and +she had been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. +He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in numberless ways, and +thoughtful of her comfort, and always smiled encouragingly when he +looked at her. Now, at the journey’s end, he began to talk, in a secret +restlessness which he could not own. His mind had been busy all day with +the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but as he neared home he +could not shake off a haunting premonition of something unpleasant to +come. + +“Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting the new +cousin,” he said. + +“Will they?” asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. “But they will be +looking out for you as well as for me.” + +“Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. But I was wrong in +saying that both children would be up, for it will be nearly seven when +we reach the house, and they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be +there. I hope you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at +our house.” + +“I love children,” said Dosia, with the solemnity of a profession of +faith. + +“I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl who has her +hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and the rest of it straggles +around in light wisps, or is gathered into an inconceivably small +pigtail at the back of her neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, +little white teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and +wisdom, because at the age of six she is the eldest daughter—and that +means a great deal, you know.” + +“Oh,” said Dosia, “I am an ‘eldest daughter.’” She choked, momentarily, +as she thought of the family at home. “Was it only last night that you +started for me?” she asked, after a pause during which she had looked +hard out of the car-window. + +“Yes; I’ve made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky that we could +catch that eight-thirty express this morning; if we hadn’t it would have +put us back nearly twenty-four hours—and that would have been bad,” he +added under his breath. + +“Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one day,” said Dosia +timidly. She felt somehow away outside of his inner thought, as if she +had no inherent place in his mind at all. “You are just starting in +business, aren’t you?” + +“Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new ventures—Dosia and +the typometer appear on the scene at the same moment, starting out on a +career together; and for this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is +all. I hope we’ll both be equally successful.” + +“Yes, indeed.” She responded to his smile, and tried to rally her +failing powers. + +“I am very glad I went for you.” He regarded her with anxiety. “You +could not have made the journey alone.” + +“Oh, I could have—but I am so glad you came!” said Dosia. She leaned +against the window, with closed eyes, to rest—her wan face, her dress, +crumpled and stained, the negligence of her hair, which she had been +unable to arrange properly, and her air of fatigue making a pitiful +contrast to the girl who had started out so gayly on her travels in her +trim attire two days before. Now, as in many another moment of silence, +she felt once more the hurtling fall, the pressure of darkness, and the +ravages of the rain and wind; the nightmare horror of the wreck was upon +her; only the remembered clasp of a hand held her reason firm. She had +spent half the day in thinking of that unknown friend, and the thought +seemed to put her under some obligation of high and pure living, in a +cloistered gratitude. A girl who had been saved in that way ought to be +worthy of it. Some day or other—some day—it must be meant that she +should meet him again and tell him what his help had been to her. She +imagined herself engaged in some errand of mercy—supporting the +tottering footsteps of an old woman as she crossed a crowded street, or +carrying a little sick child, or kneeling by a fever-touched bedside in +a tenement-house, or encouraging a terror-stricken creature through +smoke and fire. She would meet him thus, and when he said, “How good and +brave you are!” she might look up and say: “I learned it from you. Do +you remember the girl you helped the night the train was wrecked? I am +she.” And when he asked, “How did you know it was I?” she would answer: +“By the tones of your voice; I would know that anywhere.” And then he +would take her hand again—— + +Her eyes ached with unshed tears at the lost comfort of it. She tried to +see his form through the blur of darkness that had enveloped it,—a +swinging step, a square set of the shoulders, an effect of strong young +manhood,—and she pictured his face as noble and beautiful as his care +for her. Her reverie passed through different grades. She found herself +after a while idly scanning Justin’s face and wondering if it embodied +all that was high and good to her cousin Lois; after one was married a +long time, say six or seven years, did it still matter how a man looked? +She felt herself a little in awe of his keen blue eyes, in spite of his +kindness; she thought she preferred a dark man. + +She clung to Justin’s arm at the crossings and ferry, and hardly heard +his words, bewildered by the unaccustomed sights and sounds and the +weakness of her knees. Her feet slipped on the cobblestones, the +hurrying people made her dizzy, and the electric lights danced before +her eyes. + +As they were standing on the boat, two men came up to speak to Justin; +she gathered that they had heard of the accident and of his journey from +Mrs. Alexander at the whist club the night before, and stopped now to +make courteous inquiries. One, who was short and stout, with a pleasant +if commonplace face, passed on, after his introduction to Dosia; but the +other turned back, as he was following, to say: + +“By the way, I see that there was a fire in your new quarters to-day, +Alexander.” + +“A fire! For Heaven’s sake, Barr——” + +“Oh, I don’t think it amounted to much; there’s just a line in the +evening paper about it. Here, read for yourself—‘fire confined to one +floor, machinery slightly damaged.’ Insured, weren’t you?” + +“Oh, yes, yes—that isn’t the point now. We can’t afford to be kept back +a minute! I’m glad you told me; I must go—I must go back at once and +see for myself.” He stopped and looked hopelessly at Dosia. + +Short as the journey was now, he could not let her continue it by +herself; yet every fiber in him was quivering in his wild desire to get +over to the scene of disaster. He looked at his informant, who, in his +turn, was regarding the girl beside Justin. + +“I can go on by myself,” said Dosia, divining his thought, and wondering +when this terrible journey would ever end. “Truly, I can. I know you +want to go and see about the fire; please, please do! Oh, please!” + +“Barr, will you take charge of Miss Linden?” asked Justin abruptly. He +did not particularly like Barr, but this was an emergency. “Will you +take her to Mrs. Alexander?” + +“I will, indeed,” said the newcomer, with responsive earnestness. + +“Very well, then; I’ll go back on this boat. I’ll be out on a later +train, tell Lois.” He started to make his way to the other end of the +boat, to be in readiness for the return trip, and turned back once more +to give the girl her ticket; then he was lost to sight, and Theodosia +was left, for the third time, on the hands of an unknown man. + +This one only spoke to give her the necessary directions as they joined +the usual rush for the train, and refrained from talking, to her great +relief, after he had settled her comfortably in the car for the last +half-hour of traveling. She leaned against the window-casing, as before, +as far away from him as possible, suddenly and wretchedly aware of her +dilapidated appearance and the boy’s cap that covered the fair hair +curling out from under it. Her cheeks were whiter than ever, and the +corners of her mouth had the pathetic droop of extreme fatigue. + +She looked, without knowing it, very young, very forlorn, and very +frightened, and the hand in which she held the ticket given her by +Justin trembled. She was morbidly afraid that this new person would +question her as to the accident, about which she shrank from speaking; +but after a while, encouraged by his silence, she tried to turn her +thoughts by stealthily observing him. + +If her friend of the voice and hand of the night before had been only a +tall blur in the darkness, the man beside her was effectively concrete. +Neither tall nor large, he gave an impression of strength and vitality +in the ease and quickness of his motions, which bespoke trained muscles. +She decided that he was rather old—perhaps thirty. Dark-skinned, +black-haired, with a thin face, a low forehead, deep-set eyes, a high, +rather hooked nose, and a mustache, he was somewhat of the Oriental +type, although, as she learned later, a New Englander by birth and +heritage. Dosia was not quite sure whether the effect was pleasing or +the reverse; there seemed to be something about him different from the +other men she had seen, even in his clothing, although it was plain +enough. + +Interspersed with these observations were the increasing throbs of +homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Kind as Justin had been, +she had felt all the time outside of his thought and affection. This new +companion had shown consideration for her; she was grateful for it, but +she was unprepared to have him lean suddenly toward her, as a tear +trembled perilously on her lashes, and say, with twinkling eyes: + +“I beg your pardon, but do I look like him?” + +“Like—like whom?” asked Dosia, in amazement. + +“Like a person to be approved of.” + +“I haven’t considered the subject,” said Dosia, with swift dignity. + +“Ah, you see, it’s the reverse with me. As soon as Mrs. Alexander told +me she was expecting you, my mind was filled with visions of a sweet +young thing from the South. All sweet young things from the South have +dreams; mine was to embody yours. And when I saw you, I said to +myself—I beg your pardon, do you think I am getting too personal, on +such short acquaintance?” + +“Yes,” answered Dosia, dimpling in spite of herself, “very much too +personal.” She turned her head away from him, that she might not see +those sparkling, quizzical eyes so close. + +“Very well; I will finish the sentence to-morrow, as you suggest. In the +meantime, let me ask you if you have ever made a collection of +conductors’ thumbs?” + +“No!” said Dosia, in astonishment, turning around again to face him. + +“I am told that there is a great deal of character in them; it is given +by the broad, free movement of punching tickets. I have thought of +collecting thumbs for purposes of study—in alcohol, of course. But why +do you look so surprised?” + +“I am surprised that you have no collection already,” said Dosia, with +spirit; “you seem to be so enterprising.” + +He shook his head sadly. “No. How little you know me! I’m not +enterprising in the least; I have no heroic virtues, I’m only—loving.” + +“Oh!” cried Dosia, and stopped short in a ripple of merriment that was +more invigorating than wine, and that brought a rush of color to her +cheeks. + +“No? well, not until the day after to-morrow, then, if you say so. +You’re so very, very good to me, Miss Linden; it’s not often I find +anyone so considerate as you are. And have you come up North to make +your entrance into society?” + +“I have come North to study music,” said Theodosia impressively. + +“Music! Ah, there you have me.” He spoke with a new soberness. + +“Do you like it?” + +“I like it almost better than anything else in the world—too much, and +yet not enough, after all.” He shook his head with a quick, somber +gesture. “I’ll help you with the music, if you’ll let me. Did you notice +how very quickly we became acquainted? Yes? I know now why; it puzzled +me at first. It was the music in you to which I responded—I can tell +you just what little song of Schubert’s your smile is from, if you’ll +give me time.” + +“No,” said Dosia, “it isn’t from Schubert at all, and you’ll never find +the key-note to it, so you needn’t try.” She could not help daring a +little, in her girlishness. + +He laughed. “Oh, I shall make it my business to find out. For what else +what I constituted your guardian at the beginning of your career? And +it’s so good of you to say that I can come to-morrow and pour out my +heart to you! Shall it be at five? No, please don’t trouble to answer; I +like to look at your ear in that position—it’s so pearly. Too personal +again? Then let us converse about your Old Kentucky Home.” + +“It isn’t in Kentucky,” interpolated Dosia desperately, but there was no +stopping him. He was so irrelevantly absurd that she succumbed at last +entirely, and hardly knew when they left the train; when they walked up +the path to her cousin’s door, they were both laughing causelessly and +irresponsibly, in delightful comradeship. + +He turned to Dosia after he had rung the bell and said, “Good night.” + +“Aren’t you coming in to see my cousin?” + +“Oh, yes; but this is our farewell. Please make it as touching as you +can.” + +She looked up frankly as she gave him her hand and said: + +“Thank you for taking charge of me.” + +“And making a fool of myself? It was in a good cause, at any rate. But +what I wanted you to say was——” + +She did not hear, for the door had opened, and he only waited a moment +inside the house to explain her husband’s absence to Mrs. Alexander. The +news arrested her greeting to Dosia, whom she held tentatively by the +hand as she repeated: + +“Justin went back to the fire! Oh, I’m so sorry! Do you think that it +was very bad?” + +“The paper said not.” + +“It must be out now, anyway. I’m so disappointed that he did not come +home, and I have such a nice little dinner. Will you not stay, Lawson?” + +“Thank you—I wish I could.” There was a penetrative, lingering flash of +those still quizzical eyes at Dosia as he made his adieus, and then he +was gone. Why should she feel alone? + +Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome, the warmer for +being deferred; and the little Zaidee, whom she would have known from +Justin’s description of her, was standing first on one tiptoe and then +on the other, waiting to be kissed before going off to bed, as she +announced. From above came the sound of small running feet, and a +child’s voice calling: + +“Cousin Dosia—I want to see my Cousin Dosia!” A bare foot and leg +surmounted by a fluttering scrap of white raiment was thrust through the +balusters, followed by a protesting scream as his nurse heavily pursued +the fugitive with upraised voice: + +“Coom back, Reginald, coom back!” There was the noise of a scuffle as +Dosia, with her escort, laughingly ascended the stairs, to elicit a +shriek of terror and a rear view of the mercurial Reginald in full +flight for the nursery door, which banged after him, and behind which he +still raised his voice, to the shrill accompaniment of the nurse. + +“_I’ll_ go in and keep him quiet,” said Zaidee reassuringly, in answer +to her mother’s look of appeal, and she also disappeared beyond the +prison bars, after a whisk of her short crisp pink skirt, and a smile at +Dosia in which her little white teeth gleamed in an infantile glee that +only accentuated her air of preternatural capability. + +Her cousin’s kindly hands helped Dosia to remove the traces of travel, +when she had definitely refused the offer pressed upon her to be +undressed and go to bed and have her dinner brought up to her. It was +sweet to be in feminine care once more, and be pitied for the terrors +she had undergone, and feel the bond of relationship assert itself in +spite of the fact that the cousins had not seen each other since Dosia’s +early childhood. She did not want to be alone up-stairs, and sat instead +in Justin’s place at the table, clad in a soft silken tea-gown of Lois’ +that was in itself restful, trying to eat and drink and keep up her part +in the conversation about her journey and the absent members of the +family. Changes had crowded so upon poor Dosia that she felt as if she +were living in a kaleidoscope that rattled her every minute or two into +a new position; the glittering table and her cousin’s form would +presently dissolve, and leave her perhaps out in the crowded, unknown +streets, with wild-eyed faces pressing near her. + +After all, she only changed to an arm-chair in the little drawing-room, +with her head against a cushion and her feet on a foot-stool, and her +cousin still beside her, pulling back the window-curtains once in a +while to take a peep outside for her missing husband; in spite of the +real kindness of her welcome, Dosia felt a certain preoccupation in it. +Her coming was only accessory to the real importance of his, when she +herself should have been the event; the warmth of heart which she had +expected to feel toward her cousin somehow seemed to fail of expression +in this attitude. At the same time, Lois was also conscious of a lack of +response, a dullness, in Theodosia. Perhaps the likeness of relationship +was answerable for a certain reserve of manner, a formality which +neither knew how to break then or at a later time, and which was to last +until the barriers were swept away by a mighty flood; but the real cause +of the lack of sympathy lay in something much deeper. The strong thought +of self is inevitably insulating—it is as restrictive of human contact +as a live wire. Dosia, whose young life had all been spent in +unselfishness, was experiencing unexpectedly the other swing of the +pendulum in an intense and absorbing desire to have everything now as +she wanted it. She was tired of thinking of other people; the scene +should be set now for _her_. This desire was a huge mushroom growth, +sprung up in a night; it had no real root in her nature, and would +vanish as suddenly as it had come, but the shadow of it distorted her. + +The house was very much smaller than Dosia had imagined, and her eyes +roved over the little drawing-room in some perplexity, trying to make it +come up to her anticipation. All dwellers in small country places, where +economy is Heaven’s first law, expect to be dazzled by the grandeur and +elegance of “the city.” People in Balderville never dreamed of buying +new furniture from towns twenty or thirty miles away; as chair-legs +broke off, or rockers split, or tables came to pieces, all sorts of +domestic devices were resorted to by all but shiftless householders who +tamely submitted to ruin, in coaxing the article into seeming wholeness +and keeping it still in active use. The best families were learned in +all the little ways and capabilities of string and wire, and wooden +cleats and old hinges and tacks, and pieces of tin cut from tomato-cans, +and in the glueing on of piano-keys, black-walnut excrescences, +ornaments, and sofa-arms. + +Mended furniture has, however, a deprecating expression of its own, not +to be concealed by any art. Dosia recognized the absence of it in these +trim chairs that stood nattily on their slender curved legs, in the +little shining tables which did not require to be hidden by a hanging +cloth, and in the china and bric-à-brac placed boldly where they could +be seen on all sides. She wondered a little at the low wicker arm-chair +in which she was sitting, for they had wicker furnishings in the +Balderville hotel, but the blue-skyed water-color sketches on the walls +caught her fancy, and the vista of a blue-and-white dining-room, seen +through half-closed reddish portières, was charming. For all the shine +and polish and multiplicity of small ornaments in the tiny apartment, it +seemed to lack a kind of comfort to which she was used, and of which she +had caught a glimpse in the sitting-room as she passed it. She gave an +exclamation of delight as her eyes fell on a stand in one corner of the +room on which was a long glass filled with pink roses. + +“How beautiful these are! I haven’t seen any finer ones in Balderville, +and you know we are famed for our roses there.” + +“Oh,” said Lois, “to think that you have been in the house for over an +hour and I never told you about them! Justin’s not coming upset +everything. They were sent to you this afternoon.” + +“Sent to _me_?” + +“Yes—by Mr. Sutton. Didn’t you say you met him with Justin on the +boat?—a short, stout man with sandy hair.” + +“Yes, Justin introduced him, but he hardly spoke to me.” + +“That doesn’t make any difference, he sent them before he saw you at +all. I told him you were coming, and these arrived this afternoon. You +needn’t feel particularly flattered; he sends them to everybody.” + +“Sends them to everybody!” Dosia looked amazed. + +“Oh, yes; he’s rich, and devoted to girls. They laugh at him, but I +notice that they are quite ready to accept his flowers and candy and +tickets for the opera. I believe that he wants to get married; but he +really is sensible and quite nice underneath it all.” + +“Oh!” said Dosia, indefinably revolted. “And—and is Mr. Barr like that, +too?” + +“Who, Lawson? Oh, dear, no; he can’t even support himself, let alone +sending presents.” + +“He said such queer things,” ventured Dosia, with a shy desire to talk +about him. “I did not know what to make of it at first.” + +“Oh, nobody pays any attention to what Lawson says,” said Lois +indifferently. + +Dosia longed to ask why, with an instant wave of resentment at this way +of speaking; a cloud seemed suddenly to have descended upon the +glittering possibilities of her future. She fixed her eyes on her +cousin, who sat in a high, slender chair, one arm gowned in yellow silk +thrown over the back of it, and her cheek upon her arm—her rich +coloring, the grace of her attitude, the sweep of her long black skirt, +made a deep impression on the mind of the little country girl, who +seemed slight and meager and insignificant to herself. And this other +woman had been loved—she had passed through all the experiences to +which Dosia looked forward. Was it that which gave her this charm thrown +over her like a gauzy veil? + +“What a beautiful waist you have on!” she exclaimed impulsively. “Yellow +is such a lovely color.” + +“Do you think so?” said Lois. “This is an old thing that I mended to +wear because Justin always likes it. I do wish he’d come.” She rose and +walked restlessly to the window. “I’m worried about him.” + +“Yes,” said Dosia, still looking, and pleased that the remark bore out +her fancy. But she wondered; married women in Balderville looked +different—the hot Southern sun had burned the color out of their +cheeks, and the gowns they mended were of cotton, not of yellow silk; +this fresh youthfulness and self-sufficiency both attracted and +repelled, it seemed so beyond her. Her heart bounded at the thought that +Aunt Theodosia had sent money for her clothes as well as for her music +lessons. + +She did not resist the second attempt to send her to bed, although +Justin was still absent. Lois had brought her all the things she needed +in the absence of her wrecked luggage, and kissed her good night with +tenderness, saying, “I hope you’ll be very happy here, Dosia,” and she +answered, “Thank you so much for having me.” + +In spite of her helpless fatigue, she lay awake for a long time in her +tiny room. The brass bed, the polished floor with the crimson rug on it, +the dainty dressing-table, had all seemed charmingly luxurious and like +a book, but now that she was in darkness, she only saw vividly a pair of +sparkling eyes looking into hers, and caught the sound of a kind, +half-mocking voice. Every word of the conversation repeated itself again +to her excited mind; it was delightful to remember, because she had +acquitted herself so well; if she had replied stupidly she would have +died of vexation now. How clever he had been, and how really +considerate!—for she was glad to think that he had said foolish things +to her to keep her from breaking down. + +“Do I look like a person of whom you would approve?” + +“I haven’t considered the subject.” She flashed the answer back again, +and laughed, with her cheek glowing on the pillow. Why had Lois spoken +of him so strangely? She vainly strove to fathom the significance of the +words, which she resented, although they had coincided with an +instinctive feeling she had that he was not at all the kind of man she +would ever want to marry. She had already taken that provisionary leap +into a mythical future which is one of the perfunctory attitudes of +maidenhood. + +But who wanted to think of marrying now, anyway? That was something so +far off that it seemed like the end of all things to Dosia, who at +present only innocently desired plenty of emotions to live +upon—costlier living than she knew, poor child! The very instinct that +warned her against it added a heightened charm to the perilous pleasure. +And the other man—Mr. Sutton—had already sent her flowers! Oh, this +was life, life—the life she had read of and longed for, where dark eyes +looked at you and made you feel how interesting you were; where you +could have pretty clothes, and look like other people, and be brilliant +and witty and sought after. She blushed with pleasure and excitement. +Then she said a little prayer, with palm pressed to palm under the +covers, and the glamour faded away as a sweet and pure feeling welled up +from the clear depths of her heart. Her hand was once more held in +safety. In her drowsiness, it was as if she had lifted her soft cheek to +be kissed. + +To the eager inquiries of Lois, Justin answered that he had had his +dinner long before and wanted nothing. + +He asked if she and the children were all right,—his usual +question,—and she waited until he had dropped down in the arm-chair in +the sitting-room up-stairs, after changing his shoes for slippers, +before questioning him. Then she sat down by him and asked: + +“Well, how was it?” + +She spoke with eagerness, holding one of his hands in hers tenderly, +although it hung limp after the first strong, responsive clasp. + +“The fire was out before I got there.” + +“Do they know how it started?” + +“Not yet.” + +“Was the place burned much?” + +“No, not much.” + +“Did it do any damage to the machinery?” + +“Some.” + +Lois looked at him in despair. + +“Aren’t you going to tell me _anything_?” + +“There really isn’t anything to tell, dear.” He strove to speak with +attention. “You know just about as much of it all as I do.” + +“Oh, but I’m so sorry for you! Will it put you back any?” + +“I suppose so.” + +“Oh, _dear_!” she moaned helplessly. “Isn’t it too bad! If only you had +not been obliged to take that journey! Do you suppose it would have +happened if you had stayed at home?” + +“I really can’t tell. The fire might have been discovered earlier; it +started at noon, when most of the clerks were out at lunch.” + +“I see. But no one can hold you responsible.” + +“I am responsible for everything. If you do not mind, Lois, I’ll go to +bed. I’m tired; I didn’t get any sleep last night.” + +“Yes, of course.” She smoothed his hair with her fingers in remorseful +tenderness, leaning against him, with her laces touching his cheek. +“Such a long, long, tiresome journey! It’s such a pity you had to go.” + +“Oh, well, I had to, and that’s the end of it. Don’t let’s talk about it +any more. I hope that poor girl gets some sleep to-night; she needs it. +She can’t hear us, can she?” + +“No. Didn’t you think she was sweet?” + +“Yes, she seemed nice enough; she’s pretty—a little stupid, perhaps.” + +“Oh, poor Dosia!” said Lois, “stupid! I should think she might have +been, after all she had gone through. But then, you’re so used to my +cleverness!” She looked up at him with provocative eyes, into which he +smiled faintly, in recognition of what was expected of him; then he +said, with a sudden appealing change of tone, “I’m _very_ tired, Lois.” + +She kissed him good night tenderly, with magnanimous concession to his +unresponsiveness; there was no room for her in his thoughts to-night, +and she had been so longing to see him! But she would tell him all about +it to-morrow. + +Justin laid his head upon the pillow, but his eyes burned into the +darkness; there was a proud and bitter disappointment at his heart, even +while reason adjusted his losses to their proper place. Before him in +disagreeable force came the face of Leverich, and it was not the face of +a man to whom one would care to make excuse or from whom one would +challenge reproof; he could see the heavy jowl, the piercing eyes, the +half-pompous, half-shrewd expression of one who respected nothing but +success. This tangle up of the machinery, unusual and costly in its +parts and appointments—Heaven only knew what far-reaching complications +the delay of its repair might occasion! Justin had seen only too well in +others how a false step at the first may count. + +Whether or not Dosia and the typometer were united in their destinies, +they had at least one thing in common—they were both embarked upon +perilous ways. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +Joseph Leverich, however, proved unexpectedly kind and sympathetic when +Justin approached him on the latter’s return from the West. Justin had +written to him, and then had been incidentally reënforced by the +assistance of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. Bullen, the foreman, was versed in +practical knowledge of the machinery, and how to go to work about +repairs; different portions had to be sent for to all parts of the +country. Justin pored over catalogues, and checked off and figured, and +tried to find ready-made substitutes wherever he could for those they +ordinarily manufactured for the typometer. Here Cater, who had worked up +gradually into the manufacturing of his own machine, was of great use. + +“You never can find anything just as you want it,” he conceded, +encouragingly, to Justin, “but you can whittle off here and there, and +make it do. I had to get along that way at first. You can manage pretty +well, only there isn’t any real certainty to it. I got sort of +weary”—he pronounced it “weery”—“of sending for steel bars to fit, and +then getting a consignment of ’em just two sizes too large, with a +polite note saying that they were out of what I wanted, but thought it +was best, at any rate, to send me what they had. You don’t want to buck +up against that kind of thing too often—not for your own good. So I +started up the machinery, and even that goes back on you sometimes.” + +“Mine has,” said Justin grimly. + +“Oh, I don’t mean that way—it’s in the way it turns out the stuff. You +get so cussed mi-nute nothing seems quite right to you. You get kinder +soured even on the material in the rough; the grain is wrong in this, +and that hasn’t been worked sufficient, and that t’other weighs too +light.” + +“How long do you guarantee the typometer for?” + +“For a year.” + +“We stake out ours for two,—go you one better,—but it’s all rot. You +can’t guarantee nothin’ in this world; I know that isn’t grammar, but it +kinder seems to mean more’n if ’twas. You can’t guarantee nothin’, not +unless you could have the making of the raw material, and then you +couldn’t. And you can’t guarantee your workmen, especially when you have +to keep changing; I reckon human imperfection’s got to step in +somewhere. Talk of skilled labor! That’s what takes the blood out of a +man, the everlasting wrench of trying to get ‘skilled labor’ that is +skilled. Some of it is so loose-jawed it can’t even chew straight.” + +“You’re a pessimist,” said Justin, smiling. + +The other broke into a responsive grin. + +“Yes, I reckon that’s so; but I don’t even guarantee to be that, steady. +Sometimes I get kinder mushy and pleasant, and think the world ain’t a +closed-up oyster,—Shakespeare,—but just nice soft cream-cheese that’s +ready to be spooned up when you want it. Those are the sort of spells a +man’s got to look out for, or he’s likely to find himself up against the +rocks, without even an oyster-shell in sight.” + +“That’s a bad position,” said Justin, and Cater nodded confirmatively. +After a moment he said: + +“Well, I’ll guarantee _that_; I’ve been there.” As he was going, he +asked: “How’s Miss Dosia? Pretty well shook up, I suppose.” + +“Oh, she’s all right now,” said Justin. “She’s been resting for a couple +of days. You must come and see her; she will be glad to see a face from +home.” + +“I reckon I’ll wait awhile,” said Cater, “till a face from home’s more +of a novelty. She ain’t hankering for a sight of mine now.” And, indeed, +Dosia, on being informed of the prospect, showed no great enthusiasm. +Balderville and the people there were so far away in the past that she +had lost connection with them. + +And, after all, Leverich met Justin’s explanation cordially. + +“Oh, you couldn’t help a thing like that,” he said. “Don’t know yet how +the fire started, do they? Accidents are bound to occur when you least +look for them. The loss was fully covered, wasn’t it?” + +“Oh, yes.” + +“I’m glad the orders came in, anyway. Just bluff those fellows off a +bit—tell ’em you’ve got a lot more orders on and _they’ve_ got to wait; +that’s the way to do it.” + +“Oh, yes, I know that; the only thing I want is to be sure, myself, when +the orders can be filled. I’m trying to get the machinery at work as +soon as possible, and we’re sending all over the country for what we +need. Cater—he’s the manufacturer of the timoscript, across the street, +has told me of a place where they make small steel bars such as we use. +I’ve brought the catalogue with me. I sent for a consignment of them +yesterday; Bullen says they’ll do.” + +“Yes, that’s all right,” said Leverich. “Oh, you’ll get along, you’ll +get along! I knew you wouldn’t sit down and wait until I came home to +get on your feet. Don’t mind drawing on us for extra money if you need +it—and we want to get in for the export trade. What do you think of +this?” He took some papers out of his desk and began explaining them to +Justin, who listened attentively before making suggestions. His mind, +although not unusually quick, was singularly clear and comprehensive; he +brought to Leverich’s aid, if not the intelligence of the expert, +something which is often harder to get, and which Leverich was +experienced enough to appreciate at its full value—the intelligence +which sees the matter from the standpoint of the big outer world, and +not only from the inner radius of a little circle. Justin’s vision was +not, as yet, impeded by the technicalities and preconceived opinions +which often obstruct the fresh point of view even in very clever men +whose talent it is to see clearly. + +“We haven’t made any mistake in getting you,” he said to Justin, as they +parted. + +The belated fifty dollars were carried to Lois that night, with a +subdued joy in the glad provision of more to come. They were still to +live on as little as they could, but the idea of the limit stretched to +include those extra fives and tens whose expenditure was in the interest +of true economy. + +For a few days after her arrival Theodosia had kept her bed, in a +reaction from the strain of the journey that made her too weak to care +to do anything but lie in a half-drowsing and peaceful condition, +hearing the sound of the children’s voices as if they were very far off. +Lois brought up the dainty meals herself, and talked the little talk +women use on such occasions, and at four o’clock each afternoon Zaidee +appeared with a tiny lacquered tray on which stood an egg-shell cup +filled with fragrant tea, and a biscuit, and watched Dosia, as she ate +and drank, with benignant satisfaction. The younger Reginald was still +afraid and was lured near her bedside only to rush off again; but with +Zaidee there was a loving comradeship. + +It was well that Dosia had even lost interest in Mr. Barr’s call the +next afternoon, for he did not come, and afterwards she grew ashamed +that she had harbored the interest at all. Mr. Sutton, after sending +more flowers, had departed for Boston. + +But, after this convalescence, by the end of the week Dosia emerged, +eager, alert, with pink cheeks and gleaming eyes, having passed through +some subtle transformation, and bent on pleasure. She was rather silent, +indeed, except when carried away by sudden excitement, but she was +rapturously happy at the prospect of a concert and a card-party and a +large bazaar to be given soon; the concert and the bazaar were both for +charity, and she was already engaged to serve at the flower-booth in the +latter; there was to be dancing after the closing of both +entertainments. + +Clothes were the first requisite, after a definite arrangement had been +made to begin the music lessons in two weeks’ time. Every little +preparation was a source of delight to Dosia, who thought Lois wonderful +as a designer and adapter of fashions suitable to her purse, and the +older woman threw herself into this work with a sort of fierce ardor. + +[Illustration: _Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction_] + +Dosia had never seen so much ready money spent in her life, and had +never heard so much talk about it—why should she, in a place where no +one bought anything, where long-outstanding bills for tiny sums were +paid for mostly in lumber, or chickens, or cotton? Here the price of +daily living and clothing and amusements was one of the stock topics in +the intimate round of suburban dwellers. Women came to visit her cousin +Lois who at times made it their sole subject of conversation, +incidentally submitting the very garments they wore to appraisal, for +the pleasure of springing an unexpected price in her face like a +jack-in-the-box, at which she was to jump admiringly. Lois declaimed +against the habit, even while she sometimes fell a victim to it, and +Dosia found herself drawn into the same ways, after a delightful revel +in shopping for new clothes with Aunt Theodosia’s money. The chief +requisite in any article bought was that it should look to be worth more +than was paid for it. + +What most impressed Dosia in the big city was, not the size of it, nor +the height of the buildings, nor the magnificence of the shops—she +accepted these wonders, indeed, with the provoking acquiescence which +dwellers in outlying sections of the country display when confronted +with the reality they have seen so often depicted. It was the crowd, the +rush of the people, the tense expression on the faces, that struck her +with amazement; everyone looked in grim haste to get somewhere, and +forged ahead untiringly with set and definite purpose, as if there were +not a minute to lose. Dosia had been used to sauntering aimlessly, and +to seeing everyone else saunter. There was no hurry at Balderville, +except in Northern people on their first arrival, and they soon lost it. +Dosia clung to Lois’ arm on their first excursion, but the next time she +suddenly dropped the arm and forged ahead breathlessly, being caught, as +she was crossing a street, by a policeman just in time to escape being +run over by an electric car. When Lois came up to her, horrified and +indignant, the girl was laughing in wild exhilaration. + +“Oh, it’s such fun!” she said. “I’m going to walk like the other people +after this; but I’ll stop when I get to the crossings, so you needn’t +mind.” People turned around to look at the pretty girl with the hair +blown back from her face, standing still in the street and laughing. The +excitement was all part of the first intoxication of the new life. + +In the intervals of going to town, there were calls to be received, some +from married women, and some from young girls who were asked especially +to meet Dosia, and who expressed pleasure that she was to spend the +winter with them. She was asked to join a book club and a card club, and +to pour tea at the next meeting of the Junior Guild—proceedings that at +the first blush appeared radiantly festive. It was understood that she +was to be of the inner circle. + +When the other functions took place, Dosia was a success both at the +concert and the bazaar; a score of youths were introduced to her, with +whom she laughed and chatted and promenaded and danced; she danced every +time. The society of a new place is apt to appear extraordinarily +attractive until one begins to resolve it into its component parts, when +it is seen to differ but little from that one has hitherto known. Of +these dancing youths, Dosia was yet to realize that half of them were +younger even than she; some who seemed to take a great fancy for her +were the bores whom all the other girls got rid of, if possible; others +were just a little below the grade of real refinement; the really nice +fellows were not there at all, with the exception of a stray few, and +those who were attendant on their fiancées. Just at present the rhythm +of the music and the joy of motion were all in all to Dosia. Her honest +and artless pleasure shone so plainly from her face that for the moment +it was a compelling attraction in itself—for the moment, as neither +good looks, nor honesty, nor the artlessness of joy in one’s own +pleasure, serve as a power of fascination: it takes a subtler quality, +combined of both sympathy and reserve—something always given, something +always withheld. + +This happiness of healthy youth, which as yet depended on no individual +note, could last but such a brief time! When she looked back upon it, it +seemed like a little sunny, transfigured place that somebody else had +lived in—the Dosia who was just glad. + +Lois watched her enjoyment, half preoccupied, yet smilingly, pleased +with the girl’s prettiness and success. Dosia thought, “How kind she +is!” and yet, when another woman came to her and said, with warm +impulsiveness, “My dear child, it’s a pleasure to look at you!” she felt +that she had now the one thing she had missed. + +She went to the last evening of the bazaar clad in a floating blue gown +that matched her eyes. The curve of her arms, bare to the elbow, the way +the tendrils of her hair fell across her forehead, her sudden dimpling +smile, the glad, unconscious motions of her beautiful youth, would have +made her, to those who loved, the personification of darling maidenhood, +with that haunting tinge of pathos which is the inheritance of the +woman-child. + +She sold more flowers than any other girl at the bazaar that night, and +there she met Mr. Sutton, who had, indeed, called upon her, but at a +time when she was out. This guaranteed man was rather short, stocky, and +common-place-looking, with a large, round, beardless face, and a long, +newly shaven upper lip. But his appearance made no difference; Dosia’s +radiant happiness flowed over on him with impartial delight, and if she +sold many flowers, it was he who bought most of them, presenting them to +her again afterwards, so that one corner of the room was heaped up with +her spoils, and her arms were full of roses. She trailed around the +crowded room with him in her blue gown, as he had insisted on her advice +in buying, and received gifts of books and candy in the interests of +organized charity. It was like being in the Arabian Nights to have +inconsequent gifts showered upon one in this way, but she succeeded in +dissuading him from offering her a large green and pink flowered plaque +of local art, and was relieved when he gave it to the lady who had it +for sale. + +“A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden,” he said +apologetically. “Each lady makes me promise—weeks beforehand—to come +and buy from her especial table. If they would only have something I +_could_ want,”—he looked at her humorously,—“it would be easy enough +to keep my word. Why don’t they ever sell things a man can use? But look +for yourself, Miss Linden—it’s charity to help me out.” He paused +irresolutely by a yellow-draped table. “Might you like some sewing-bags, +now, or this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of +these—plush arrangements?” + +“No!” said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, “I mightn’t.” + +“Or a doll, now?” He had strayed a step farther on. “Would you like a +doll for Mrs. Alexander’s little girl, and some of these charming toys?” + +“Oh, how _lovely_ of you!” said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of +her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent +gratitude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon +the scene. George Sutton’s seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He +was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had +been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had +been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and +living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied +Spanish in a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his life +to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to +give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea +that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before +asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret +that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young +woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his +glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his +sentimental remarks had been confided by one girl to another. But +further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. +Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it +permanently on one person. George Sutton’s heart performed the pleasing +miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his +amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so +strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself +to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to +have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had +never made a bad bargain. + +Dosia’s grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet +vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she +gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for +the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be +deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be +fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not +notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although +everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time +until the dancing began. + +Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not +learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had +been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished +perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements +of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn, +without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could +not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons +or of lambs could have propitiated the gods who presided over the +Terpsichorean art, Mr. Sutton’s domestic altars would have been reeking +with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart +as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It +seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked +in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized +his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up +and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little +boy. + +It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in +the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held +in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She +watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather +wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and +darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever +the peculiar effect of being unlike other people—his overcoat hung +carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the +other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression +of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact +that he had lingered in her thought at all. + +He had been the subject of Lois’ conversation on one of the afternoons +of Dosia’s convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by +others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about +him, she was met by the casual answer, “Oh, everybody knows what Lawson +is.” He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he +carried no weight, and there seemed to be social limitations which it +was an understood thing that he was not to pass. + +Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little country town of +his birth with a past such as places of the kind are too fatally apt to +fasten upon the boys who grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, +Heaven only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barr’s idle youth +had been subject; and nobody in his new home had cared to hear. Scandal +may be interesting, but one instinctively avoids filth. It was an +understood thing, when he first came to Woodside, that his +brother-in-law, Joseph Leverich, had lifted him out of “a scrape” in +response to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy back +with him to get him away from village temptations and substitute the +more bracing conditions of city life, where entertainment that was not +vicious could be had. + +The experiment had apparently worked well; in the eight years which +Lawson Barr had passed in Woodside, no one had anything bad to tell of +him. He was more inclined to the society of men than of women, and +shared the imputation of being fond of what is called “a good time”; but +he was never seen really under the influence of liquor. Shy in general +company at first, he became rather a favorite afterwards in a certain +way; he was fond of sports, and was very kind to women and children; he +was also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the piano when he +was in the mood; he was one of those gifted people who can play, after +their own fashion, on any instrument. When he felt pleasantly inclined, +no one was more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He had +become engaged to a girl in good standing, after a summer flirtation. +The girl had come there on a visit, and the engagement lasted only until +her return and the revelation of his prospects to parental inspection. + +For Lawson never had any prospects—or, at least, they never solidly +materialized. He never kept his positions for more than a few months at +a time. There was always a different reason for this, more or less +unimportant on each occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers +whom he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated by +his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic in finding new +openings for him, ready to champion hotly his merits against that most +galling of all criticism, which consists in the simple statement of +adverse facts. + +“You will never be able to make anything out of him,” was a sentence +which his relays of friends were sure to hand on to one another. + +One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep the golf-grounds in +order—a position, however, which he filled in such a well-bred manner, +and with so many niceties of consideration for everyone’s comfort, that +to have him around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, and +the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket once more and +started going in to town mornings as one of them. + +Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the village, and part of +the time he stayed with the Leverichs; rumor said that Leverich +alternately turned him out or welcomed him, as he lost or renewed +patience, but the relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always +appeared to be friendly. + +Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing to forget the +youthful faults of the handsome, clever boy, and let him in on probation +to the outer edges of it, it was a singular fact that after all these +years of apparent respectability he had made no further progress. + +There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences with a +certain inner purity untouched; with an added reverence for goodness, +and a strength of character all the greater for the sheer effort of +retrieval; whose eyes are forever ashamed when they look back on the +sins that were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the +painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there had been, +perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison lodged, to a +deterioration, however delicate, of the whole tissue. It is strange—or, +rather, it is not strange—that, in spite of respectability of life, +with nothing whatever that was tangible to contravene it, this should +have been thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what felt +of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one he does, and the +combined judgment of the members of an intelligent suburban community is +very keen as to character, no matter how it differs in regard to +actions. The standard of morality in such a section is high—it may +indulge occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a lower scale, +but in social relations the lesser order must go. “Shadiness” is +damning. Lawson was not exactly “shady,” but he might be. No girl was +ever supposed to fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too +intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. Strangers whom +he impressed favorably always asked, as Dosia did, “Why, what has he +_done_?” And received the same reply Lois gave her: “Oh, nothing.” + +“Isn’t he—nice?” + +“Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He can’t seem to make a living; +I don’t know why—he’s clever enough. There’s really nothing against him +though, except that he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that +when he goes away on trips he—drinks. But Justin wouldn’t like me to +say it; he hates to have people talked about in this way. Still—it’s +just as well that you should know all about him.” + +“Oh, yes,” said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, yet in +reality mystified. She felt at once indignant at the imputations thrown +on Mr. Barr, and yet a little ashamed of having liked him, as something +in bad taste. + +As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped that he wouldn’t +come and speak to her at all; but the hope was vain, for, without +apparently seeing her, he made his way through the room, at the +cessation of the dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers. + +It is in one of George MacDonald’s stories that Curdie, the hero, tests +everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which unconsciously reveals the true +nature to his magic sense; claws and paws and hoofs and the serpent’s +writhe are plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia +involuntarily tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand that had +held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction was strong within her +that some day she would meet and recognize her helper by that remembered +touch, if in no other way. Mr. Barr’s hand was smooth, with long +fingers, and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away quickly, +with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met his coolly +appraising eyes, that she had done something school-girlish and +ill-bred. + +“You did not come to see me, after all,” she said, when the first +greeting was over, and could have bitten out her tongue for saying it. + +“I regretted very much not being able to,” he replied, in a tone of +conventional politeness. “I went West the next day, and have only just +returned. You have been enjoying yourself, I hope?” + +“Oh, immensely,” said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; “I couldn’t have +had a better time, possibly.” Her eyes roved toward the people in front +of them with studied inattention, although she was strangely conscious +in every tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side. + +“You have been to town, I suppose?” he pursued. + +“Yes, indeed, several times.” + +“Would you care to come out in the corridor and walk?” he asked +abruptly, as the music struck up again. “I’m not in evening dress, you +see; I only returned from my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer +to dance?” he added. + +“Oh, I prefer to dance!” said Dosia, with the first natural inflection +her voice had possessed in speaking to him. + +“Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow coming over for you. +Good night.” + +“You are not going to leave _now_?” exclaimed Dosia, with disappointment +too quick to be concealed. + +“In a few moments; I may not see you again.” He did not offer his hand +this time, but bowed and was gone. + +It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, +and Dosia’s feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she +did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they +circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled +of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were +being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under +the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of +silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the +smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while +his mother lamented her husband’s prolonged absence to everyone who +passed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, +going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the +floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the +dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck +twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose: + +“One more waltz—just one more! This is the best part of the evening. +Lawson—Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, don’t say you’re too +tired—play!” + +Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosia’s waist, +looking questioningly down at her. + +“I think I’d better go,” she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet +with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was +plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancing—yet she was +young, too. But at that moment the music struck up again—there was a +crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found +herself gliding into motion ere she was aware. She knew before she +looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the +keys, seemed remote and sad. + +The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened +for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the +bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood +massed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the +polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as +Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it +that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers +flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. +Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which +she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that +she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept +them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden +of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the +stars she swung in that long, entrancing strain—from the flowers to the +stars! From the stars—ah, whither went that flight of ecstasy—this +endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again now—back +to the stars; beyond, beyond—oh, whither? + +A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. It brought Dosia +to the earth, awake and trembling, with parted lips and panting breath. +But her eyes had the wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the +flowers, as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching +the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had slipped unnoticed +from her hand, she walked across the floor with Billy. Her loveliness, +as she smiled, brought a pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so +plainly of the evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the +future possession of some dearest lover, who could never know his loss. + +“I hope I haven’t let you stay too long, Dosia,” she said practically, +and Justin hurried her into her wraps, after she had given Billy the +rose he asked for. Everybody was leaving at once in couples, laughing +and chattering, with the lights turned out behind them as they went. + +The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with Justin and Lois +was a side view of Lawson Barr going down the stone steps, carrying in +his arms the child who had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The +light head rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs +hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, voluble in thanks, +with the child’s cap in her hand. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence +known locally as “going to Stevens’”; in other words, he was a daily +attendant at the institute of that name, situate on the heights of +Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of +that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to +over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each +morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient +trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied +fitfully as he journeyed. + +Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters +admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a +small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother +often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and +that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same +effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of +his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so +blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his +round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her William’s +ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way +that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, +Billy was a young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short +clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of +circumstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his +mother’s exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with +naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had +accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the +injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had +had the first convincing “shy”; she had complained untiringly to parents +by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to +the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadn’t been +the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an +outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an +understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mother’s +attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain +loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward +authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far +below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the +meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow. + +The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently +experiencing the tender passion since the age of seven, she regarded +only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have +liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude +boys. + +With added years Billy’s outward demeanor had changed in his daily +journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with +school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare; +he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat, +or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But +the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that +its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers one +day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he +would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him, +or whether he was “up against it again” at Stevens, his replies were +unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The +change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was +caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him. + +The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a +peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in +the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one +turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek +and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose +and a dark mustache—the nose and the mustache turned sideways much +oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a +pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and +fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and +Billy swore under his breath. + +When the train had rolled into the station, he went with the other +passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house to see—yes, they were +going over the same ferry together, he still bending toward her as they +walked, she with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one +unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, “The gall of him!” and +walked away to the humiliating trolley which showed that he was still +“going to Stevens’.” If he had been out of bondage, he would have been +quick to follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and +show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate duet. + +It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain days his +accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected that he no longer +whistled cheerily all the time he was dressing, but only when he heard +her foot upon the stairs; and although he still chaffed his admiring +sisters at dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the +jesting that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. He +found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. His mother +brought him pills which he refused to take, towering above her—she was +a little woman—tense and aloof. When she taxed him with having +something on his mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her +go no further. + +“It is nothing to do with myself,” he conceded, with the spirit of a man +looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The woman in her bowed to it as +she went down-stairs, with pride in him rampant in her heart, to deliver +her report to the two sisters waiting below. + +The Snow family had been settled in the town from its beginning as a +suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow having died—after losing money +largely on his real-estate investments there—twelve years later, when +Billy was an infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large +taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in the place, rich +and poor, and were consequently regarded somewhat in the light of a +directory; the woman by the day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man +or boy could always be achieved by applying to them, for they had an +invariable acquaintance with respectable persons temporarily forced into +filling these positions. They themselves, while adding to their own +finances in various ways, neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their +affairs could interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small +old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall nearly level +with the street; and the little low-ceiled parlor and sitting-room, with +their narrow doorways and slightly uneven floors, were crowded with +large mahogany and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and +Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, from the +cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the ornamental hanging +calendar of the past season. In the autumn the ladies potted plants with +such accumulative energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of +damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and spikes and flat +blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly where to sit without +encroaching perilously on these; Billy’s friends always dropped first +into a certain chair and rocked into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on +the marble-topped table behind. + +The Snows had the recognized position in society of being Asked to +Everything. When they went to entertainments, it was in the dark, quiet +garments of every-day life, or the one often remodeled state robe +belonging to each, irrespective of what other people wore. Their +circumstances and their birth were too well known to need pretense. + +Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was twenty-seven, tall +like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be +the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict +unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer +young—as a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely +distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. +Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow +up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long +custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for +sixteen. She was her brother’s favorite, secretly aiding and abetting +him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him +now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in +view of his height and large experience. + +The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman, +dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations +and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden +beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat +by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming +plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went +up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and +the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary +fence—incidents of note in themselves without further connection. She +seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one +were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could +answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had +worked hard for her mother in her early youth—that little mother who +now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room from her +interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone +of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: “William won’t +tell me what’s the matter, but I know it’s something to do with that +girl at the Alexanders’. Willie is growing up so fast!” + +“Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden,” said Miss Bertha, in comfortable +corroboration. “That’s been going on for some weeks.” + +“Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps she’s snubbed +him in some way.” + +“No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating +Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, it’s just +being in love that upsets him.” + +“Yes, I really think that’s all.” + +Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with +slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth. +The daylight was beginning to go. + +“He’s got a rose she gave him,—never mind how I know,—and he keeps it +wrapped up in tissue”—she pronounced it “tisher”—“paper in his +waistcoat pocket. He leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his +clothes. And Ada says—you know that picture in the magazine that we all +said looked so like Miss Linden? He’s got it in a little frame. Ada says +that it tumbles out from underneath his pillow once in a while when +she’s taking the covers off; I suppose the child puts it there at night +and forgets it in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again +when she makes up the bed, as if she’d overlooked it. He never says +anything, and of course she doesn’t, either.” + +“I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously,” said the +mother, alarmed. She had known all this before, but it was a fashion of +the family to talk over and over what they already knew. “I _hope_ she +will not take him seriously.” + +“Mother! They’re both so young.” Ada, who had been leaning forward with +her face in her hands and her chin upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke +for the first time. + +“Oh, that’s very well!” Mrs. Snow tossed her head as one with +experience. “He is, of course, nothing but a mere boy at nineteen, but a +girl of twenty is years older. When a girl is twenty, she goes in +society with women of _any_ age. I was married myself at eighteen—not +that I should wish either of my daughters to do so.” + +“Well, you can feel safe about that, mother,” interpolated Ada. + +“William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not blame any girl +for being somewhat captivated by him; I should be sorry if Miss Linden +allowed her affections to be engaged. She may not know that his career +is mapped out before him. William will not be in a position to marry +before he is thirty-six. William is——” + +“The people are coming from the train,” interposed Miss Bertha, waving +back one thin hand to stop her mother’s discourse—which she could have +repeated backward—and scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across the +street. + +“Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, come here. Mrs. +Leverich has on her new furs—the ones her husband gave her. Don’t they +make her look stout? There are the Brentons, I think that’s a bag of +coffee he’s carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square +ends—perhaps _she’s_ been buying corsets; if not, it must be a bottle +of whisky. And there—who is that? Oh, I thought it was Mr. Alexander in +a new coat; of course it’s too early for him—they say he’s been making +money hand over hand lately. And here comes—why it’s George Sutton! +Ada, Ada, bow! he’s looking. He sees us waving—ah!” + +There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared on the cheeks +of both sisters. + +The mother murmured apprehensively, “They say _he_ is devoted to Miss +Linden,” but neither answered. Ada had benefited, like the other girls, +by his attentions, she had been given candy and flowers and made one in +his theater-parties, but it was the secret conviction of all three women +that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his real +devotion to Ada. The others were just a circle—she was the particular +one; and Heaven only knows how many girls in this circle shared the same +conviction. His smile and nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that +blotted out all his preference for Miss Linden. + +“You had better pull down the shade now,” said Mrs. Snow, after a few +minutes. “It’s time to light the lamp.” + +“No, wait a moment—there’s another train in.” Miss Bertha’s eyes +pierced the gloom. “The Carpenter boys, those new people in the Farley +house, and that’s all. No, there’s somebody ’way behind—I declare, it’s +Miss Linden! She’s ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at +first. I wonder she didn’t come on the train ahead. Who can that be with +her? Why—” there was a pause. “I suppose he must have just happened to +get off with her at the station,” said Miss Bertha in an altered voice. + +“Oh, yes; I’m sure that’s it,” said Ada. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +“What is all this that I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr?” asked Justin +abruptly, one evening when he and his wife were at home alone together, +a rather unusual occurrence now. Either he was out, or there was +company, or Dosia was sitting with them by the table on which stood the +reading-lamp. Just now she was staying overnight with Miss Torrington, +at the other end of the town, “across the track,” practicing for a +concert. + +Justin had dropped his collar-button that morning in the process of +dressing, and the small incident was productive of unforeseen results. +The hunt for it had delayed him to a later train and a seat by Billy +Snow. + +“What is this I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? They say she has been +going in with him on the express nearly every morning this month. She +may have been coming out with him, too, for all I know.” + +“Who says so?” asked Lois, startled, but contemptuous. + +“Billy, for one.” + +“I do not see what business it is of his.” + +“That hasn’t anything to do with it, Lois. As a matter of fact, the boy +wouldn’t have told me at all if I hadn’t happened to sit with him +to-day; he’s heard plenty of remarks on it, though, and he’s cut up +about it. They sat in front of us, some seats down, entirely oblivious +of everybody; it might have been their private car. It gave me a start, +I can tell you, when Billy said it was not the first time. Has she said +anything to you about it?” + +“Yes, I think she has mentioned once or twice that she had seen him on +the train; I know he brought her home one afternoon when she was late. +But I haven’t paid any particular attention; and, after all, there’s no +harm in it.” + +“Oh, no; there’s no _harm_, if you put it that way—only she mustn’t do +it. You know what I mean, Lois. Dosia ought not to want to be with him.” + +“I suppose he comes and talks to her, and she doesn’t know how to stop +him.” + +“Perhaps.” + +“And you sent her out in his care that first night,” said Lois. She felt +unbelieving and combative; Lawson was so unattractive to her that she +could not conceive of his being otherwise to any girl. + +“Of course; and I would do so again under the same circumstances—that +was an emergency. But that’s very different from making a practice of +it. You must tell Dosia, as long as she can’t see it herself. Let her +get her lesson changed to another hour and that will settle the thing. +Does she see much of Barr at other places?” + +“No more than anybody else does; of course, he is more or less around. +But she knows _just_ what he is like, Justin; I told her all about him +the first thing, and she hears it from everybody. I am sure you are +mistaken about her liking his society, she told me once that it always +made her uncomfortable when he was near her. I really don’t think you +need be afraid of anything serious.” + +“All right, then. Probably a hint will be sufficient; but don’t forget +to give it, Lois. She is very much of a child in some things.” + +“Yes, she is,” said Lois, resignedly. + +This having Dosia with them had turned into one of those burdens which +people sometimes ignorantly assume under a rose-colored impulse. It had +seemed that it must be necessarily a charming thing to have a young girl +in the house. But to have a young girl who was always practicing on the +piano, to the derangement of Reginald’s sleep or to the inconvenience of +visitors in the little drawing-room, one who had to be specially +considered in every plan, and whose presence took away all privacy from +Lois’ daily companionship with Justin, was a doubtful pleasure. Even +this rainy evening with Justin and herself cozily placed together was, +after all, not hers, but invaded, if not with the presence, at least +with the disturbing thought of Dosia. + +There were all the little grievances which sound so infinitesimal, and +yet count up to so much when sympathy is lacking. Dosia had lived in a +Southern atmosphere and in a home which had no regular rule. She +invariably wanted to play with the children at the wrong time, and yet +perhaps did not always offer to take care of them when it would have +been a help. If Lois was busy when Justin came home at night, she would +invariably find afterwards that Dosia had swiftly poured into his +ears—in nervous loquacity at being alone with him—all the domestic +happenings of the day, so that every remark that Lois made was answered +by a “Yes; Dosia has already told me.” These slight threads, which Lois +had treasured up from which to spin a little web of interest for her +beloved, would thus be broken off short. Dosia also had a fashion of +ensconcing herself unthinkingly in Justin’s particular seat by the lamp, +in which case he sat patiently and uncomfortably in an attitude out of +the radius, or else went up-stairs to the untidy sitting-room to read by +himself, leaving Lois, with her teeth on edge, to keep company perforce +with Dosia, to whom he would not allow Lois to make protest, avowing +that he was not inconvenienced at all. He had an unvarying kindness and +sense of justice regarding the girl. But the family was like the bicycle +of concert-hall fame, built for two, and this third person jarred its +running qualities out of gear. + +It was the night after Justin’s charge to her that Lois nerved herself +to broach the subject of Lawson to Dosia, who was copying some music by +the table. Both her hair and her dress were arranged with a little new +touch of elegance, but there was a droop to the corners of her mouth +that had not been there before—a suggestion of hardness or melancholy +or defiance, it would have been difficult to say which. + +Justin was getting ready to go out, and Lois could hear his footsteps as +he walked up and down above. She hated to begin, and her very reluctance +gave a chill tone to her voice as she said temporizingly, “Dosia, please +don’t keep Reginald out so late again as you did this afternoon. It is +too cold.” + +“We only went to the post-office; he said he was warm.” + +Dosia, who had generously curtailed her practicing to take the mother’s +place, felt ill-used. + +“I know; but it was too late for him. His feet were as cold as ice. I am +_so_ afraid of croup.” + +“I’m sorry,” said Dosia, in a low voice. “I won’t do it again.” + +“Well, never mind that now.” Lois hesitated, and then took the plunge: +“I want to speak to you about Lawson Barr, Dosia.” + +Dosia’s color, which came and went so prettily when she spoke, always +left her when she was really moved, or at the times when girls +ordinarily blush. She turned pale now and her eyes became defiant, but +she did not answer. + +The other stumbled along, sorry and ashamed, as if she were the culprit: + +“People have been commenting—I hear that he has been with you a great +deal lately.” + +“Where?” The girl’s voice was hard. + +“On the train.” + +“He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice the week +before—yes, and yesterday. And he came out with me once.” She counted +out the times as if they were a contravention. “I don’t see how I am +going to help it if people speak to me, I can’t _tell_ them to go away. +_I_ don’t want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one day; +was that commented on, too?” + +There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth by outraged +modesty—and there is no modesty that feels itself more outraged than +that of the girl who knows she has given some slight cause for reproof. + +“Dosia, be reasonable,” said Lois, annoyed that her talk was being made +so hard for her. “I know it’s horrid to be ‘spoken to,’ but Justin is +very particular, and he feels that we are responsible for you. And, +besides, you wouldn’t want it thought that you liked Lawson’s society. I +am to go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the hour for +your lesson changed.” She paused for some answer, but none came, and she +went on: “I told Justin that he need not worry, there was no danger of +your caring too much for _Lawson_! That’s nonsense. Why, you know all +_about_ him, and just what he amounts to. But, of course, if you are +seen with him——” + +“You need not say any more. I never want to speak to him again!” said +Dosia, strangling. She swept her things from the table and rushed up to +her own room in a whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the +imputation in Lois’ tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was +pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what another +despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate of him as she +had hitherto been to the public one. + +She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something that she had +been unconsciously dreading had come upon her—the notice of her little +world. Before it had been voiced to her by Lois she had persistently +considered herself unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion +for her being “spoken to,” yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment that +she had not been quite true to her highest instincts. + +The exquisitely sensitive perception which is an inherent part of +innocence was hers. The Dosia who at twelve could not be induced to +enter a room when a certain man was in it, because she “did not like the +way he _looked_ at her,” had as unerring an instinct now as then; it was +an instinct so deep, so interwoven with every pulse of her nature, that +to deny it ever so little was a spiritual hurt. She could not have told +why certain subjects, certain joking expressions even, revolted her so +that she shrank from them involuntarily. She could not have told why she +knew there was something about Lawson different from the other men she +had been accustomed to. Dosia not only knew nothing of the practice of +evil, she knew nothing of life nor the laws of it; but it could never be +said of her that she did not know when right bordered on wrong. She +knew—and it would have been impossible for her not to have known—her +slightest deviation from that shining road which can only be followed by +white feet. Her first quick idea of Lawson as not the kind of man that +she would ever want to marry still held good. Back of all this was the +image of the true prince. + +There are people whose natures we always feel electrically, a sensation +which depends neither on liking nor on disliking, and which often +partakes of both. When we meet them there is always a slight shock, a +psychic tingling, a displacement of values, that makes us uncertain of +our pathway; the colors seen in this artificial light are different from +those seen by day. Barr affected Dosia thus. If he came into a room, she +knew it at once; dancing or walking or talking with others, she felt his +eyes upon her, disquieting her and making her conscious of his presence, +so that she could not get up or sit down naturally. When he was not +there, everything was flat and uninteresting in the withdrawal of this +exciting disquietude. If she met his remarks cleverly, it gave her a +delighted occupation for hours in recalling them; if she failed in +repartee, and was “thick” and school-girlish, her cheeks would burn and +the taste for life would leave her; she could hardly wait to see him +again to retrieve herself. She was not in love with Barr, she was not +even in love with love,—a fairly healthful process,—but she was in +love with the excitement of his presence. + +She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to seek her. After the +night of the bazaar and that wondrous waltz, she had felt that he must +fly to speak to her at the nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had +played for her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure +him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She invented many +excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp disappointment of which he was +necessarily unconscious. As she met him casually at different +places,—with the old quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar +manner,—his lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over which +she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she lived in was +entirely of her own creation. In these last two months she had always an +undercurrent of thought for him, whether she was practicing or sewing, +or chaffing with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy +attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawson’s avoidance of her had come a +childish, uncalculating’ impulse to attract. Dosia had not told the +truth when she said that she could not help his speaking to her; she +knew very well the morning he would have passed her by in the train, as +usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,—he knew the +place allotted to him,—but he accepted permission. When he sat down by +her, she swiftly wished him away again; yet her heart beat under his +cool glance—a glance which seemed to read her every thought. These +interviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, yet in +which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious and stinging +pleasure, like eating ice. + +There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about Christmas-time +and after—a delightful flare that burned up red and glowing, only to +sink back gradually into the darkness of monotony. There was that fall +into a hum-drum condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which +shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept later down-town, +and the women had the usual influx of winter colds and minor maladies +which interfere with planned festivities. The younger sort had +engagements, individually and collectively, for “things in town,” either +coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight with +friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove Tuesday had fallen +through. + +The fairy glamour was already gone for Dosia. The personal note which +she had missed at first was everything, and she found it nowhere but in +Lawson. If she could have poured out her thoughts and feelings to +Lois,—“talked things over,” girl-fashion,—if Lois had been her friend +and lover—But Lois had no room for her; Dosia had learned to feel all +the bitterness of the alien. And she was shy with the pleasant but +self-sufficient women whom she met socially, and who were so intimate +with one another; Dosia merely sat on the edge of conversations, so to +speak, and smiled. She could not learn this assured fluency. The very +children were hedged in from her by restrictions. To give up those +little incidental meetings with Lawson was to give up the one silver +string on which hung happiness, and yet—and yet—Dosia felt the sting +of Lois’ matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him indescribably. +All women look down upon a man who will allow himself to be despised. +She had cherished an ideal of him as a man lonely, misunderstood, +terribly handicapped by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable +of good and noble things. She had thought—— + +“Dosia?” + +“Well?” + +“Will you shut your door? The light streams down here and keeps Reginald +from going to sleep. He waked when you went up-stairs.” + +Dosia rose and closed the door noiselessly; she would have liked to shut +it with a bang. It was a climax. There seemed to be nothing that she +could do in this house that was right! Her attitude had ceased to be +only that of an alien, it was that of an antagonist; but it was also +that of a lonely and unguarded child. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. Dosia could hear +Justin’s voice upraised toward his only son, and Lois’ pleading +“_Please_, Justin!” + +“Be quiet, Lois; I’ll settle this. Go down-stairs.” + +“I want dinky orter.” The child’s voice was high. + +“You have just had a drink of water; lie still.” + +“Redge ’ants ’noder dinky orter.” + +“Do you hear me? Lie still.” + +“Let me take him, Justin; I’m sure he isn’t well. I——” + +Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, and could +imagine the look from Justin that had commanded her obedience. There was +a definite masculine authority about him before which, on those rare +occasions when he chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed +down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric ages. Only the +son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness caught from the same +blood. + +It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother down-stairs, +vibrating with sympathy for her child, could not understand Justin’s +attitude, or why he was so much more severe with the boy than he had +ever been with Zaidee. + +Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess, +toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry. +But the boy was different. Civilized man still usually lives in the +outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance +of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature +in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he +knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it. +His “Lie still, you rascal, or I’ll make you,” voiced in its sternness +an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee. + +Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down +once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife +to kiss her good-by. + +“Are you going out again?” Her voice had a dull patience in it and her +eyes refused to meet his. + +“Yes; did you want me for anything special?” + +He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue +eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by +his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at +Lois’ insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of +the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. +Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. +Justin’s discarded one had passed through every stage of decent +finesse—the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined +sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife +in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship +still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude +to make a new and opulent person of him. + +“No, of course I don’t want you for anything special”—she spoke in a +monotone. “I only thought you were going to stay home.” + +“I’ve got to go to Leverich’s, and I want to speak to Selden about the +house first. I promised him I’d stop there.” + +They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the +hill, and Selden was the architect. + +“You have been out every night this week”—there was a suspicion of +tears in her voice. “I do so hate to be left alone.” + +“You have Dosia.” + +“Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I can’t make out +that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she +looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home +this evening—won’t you, dear?” + +“I can’t—I wish I could.” He said the words mechanically, for he was +burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. “I must be at +Selden’s by half-past eight.’ + +“It is only a quarter-past now—you can walk there in five minutes. Do +sit down for a moment. I don’t get any chance to talk to you at all, and +you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any +more—except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night.” + +Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and +held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all +the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrast—her +rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves +of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful, +but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily +repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his +hat against it. She lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to +him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a +loss—— + +Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his +children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness +of their possession lately,—the sweetness that consists in watching the +unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,—but when he +had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a +hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious +moments waste. He could hear Zaidee’s gentle little voice repeating her +mother’s perfunctory extenuation: “Poor daddy’s nervous; come away, +Redge!” + +“I hope you’ll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the +stairs,” said Lois suddenly. + +“He’ll put one there if he can.” + +“If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I don’t want +the house if he can’t put the closet in. I——” + +“All right. I’ve got to go now.” If he had cared to think about it, he +might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as +these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from +her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far +into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried +him from her. + +The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of +prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures—of which the house +on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it +were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with the +principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard +not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody +knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality, +there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions +has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a +sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently +assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the main one. + +The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the +factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from +that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute +are from the twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole +orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing +that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of +enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping +enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money +came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as +the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a +hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but +“hands” must be paid off on Saturday night; there had been one Saturday +when there had been what Leverich called “tall hustling” by him and +Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had +thought of his backers as men of millions—with that easy, assured +confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions +were in the concrete, solid and golden—a bottomless store in reserve. +He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant +quality, running like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, +there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both +Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little +butter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover +an emergency was a daily expedient—the ability to do so ranked as a +part of one’s assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large +sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the “business” +seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To +his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade passed and +repassed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated +attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after +the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind +of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and +the children’s. + +Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in +order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of +social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through +everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but +a woman. His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her +thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less +of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick +feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was +merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if +her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him +tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling +that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because +she must wait until night to set herself right with him again. At those +times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her children—her +only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town +and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded +streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But +when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed +the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother’s +absence. + +She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening +retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first +surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown +to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal +annoyance,—like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,—that measurably lessened the +joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man +must have patience with his wife’s complainings, and try always to +remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it, +which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never +complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him. + +Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into +the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the +door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was +inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired +in an old “dress suit,” the conventional lines of which, with the stiff +expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature +still more pronounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little +drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back +as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm +stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet +he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift +pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from +the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to +him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring +earnestness. + +“Well, you are all right,” he said, after the first greetings; “Miss +Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South I’d say +just what I thought of you, but I’m afraid to up here; folks are too +careful about complimentin’ for me. When I see a young lady like +you,—or like Mrs. Alexander, here,—” he rose and bowed gallantly, “I +want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. There’s +nothing so beautiful on God’s earth to me as a beautiful woman—unless +it’s a mother. A mother doesn’t need to have a complexion if she’s got +the mother spirit shinin’ out of her. I had a mother once—a better +never lived. She’s dead.” + +“That is very sad,” said Lois, in the pause that followed this +announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and +Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful +communing. + +“Yes, ma’am,” said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs +back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it. + +“How is your wife?” asked Dosia. “Have you seen her lately?” + +“I was home for a week around Christmas-time,” answered Mr. Cater. “It’s +sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short period—at least, I +find it so. I don’t know _as_ it pays, except as something to look +forward to before you’ve done it; there’s a good deal in that. My wife +lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it +seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home.” + +“I should think she would want to stay here with you,” said Dosia. + +Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. “Well, the fact is,” he +conceded, “my wife’s powerful fond of her family. There’s nothing +against a woman being fond of her family.” + +“Oh, no,” said Lois. + +“No, ma’am. My wife’s a mighty fine woman. If I’d had the luck to belong +to her family—but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to +me crops up, I expect, when I ain’t countin’ on it. She did bring the +children and try livin’ up here in a flat the first year I went into the +business, but it made her so pinin’ she had to go back; she wasn’t used +to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_ +know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin’ sort of old and agin’, +and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin’ her, I +reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin’ a +gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he’d promised +her to quit. Her sister’s husband, Jim Pierce, he’d lit out before. Now, +there’s the other brother, Satterson—he’s a mighty fine fellow, six +foot two in his stockin’s, but he doesn’t _do_ anything. Just drinks. My +wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don’t blame any woman +for being devoted to her family—shows heart.” + +“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an +inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory +relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater’s earnings; she knew his wife as a +pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth. + +“After all, there isn’t much in a man, when you get down to it, to +interest a woman,” continued Mr. Cater impartially. “She wants him to +think of _her_; of co’se it’s his business to. I had a sort of set idea +to begin on—but there’s nothin’ in life so wreckin’ as a set idea; I’ve +found that out. You’ve got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and +turn it so’s you can see to keep on your windin’ way without runnin’ +down your fellow-bein’s—isn’t that so? I don’t blame any woman for +findin’ out that a man doesn’t always make up for home and mother—I +don’t know that I always yearn for my own society.” His inscrutable +expression changed to a smile. “I reckon you won’t yearn for it, either, +if I go on talkin’ in this way.” + +“Oh, yes, I will,” said Dosia, dimpling. “Did you see my father and +mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?” + +“Why—about the same as usual,” replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a +swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly +materialized itself to Dosia. “I promised them I’d come and see you—and +meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia’s comin’ here that I got +acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander,” he continued, turning to +Lois. “He’s a mighty fine man. He and I, we’re choppin’ at the same log, +so to speak, only he’s takin’ side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon +he’s got a pretty good backin’?” + +“Oh, yes,” affirmed Lois. + +“Yes, ma’am. Of course, he doesn’t talk about it. I haven’t seen Mr. +Alexander much for a couple of weeks; he’s been busy and I’ve been +busy—we lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his +friends—Mr. Leverich for one—slightly in the way of business. Mr. +Martin—Mr. Martin’s a man _nobody_ knows more’n slightly. You would not +think he was such a smart business man, would you? He’s so sort of small +and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. But _I_ don’t +care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake +in all they touch. Now you think I’m hard on him, don’t you?” He +hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois: +“Martin sort of reminds me of somethin’ that happened with my two boys +when I was home at Christmas. They’re little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, +right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you.” + +“They are dear little fellows,” said Dosia warmly. + +“They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind ’em, and Angy—that’s +the eldest, he’s six—was stoppin’ the way; so I says to him, ‘What’s +stoppin’ you, son?’ and he answers: ‘Oh, I’m carryin’ up Jim’s cake and +my cake, and I’m eatin’ _Jim’s cake now_.’ That’s like Martin for all +the world—always carryin’ somebody’s cake for ’em, and swallowin’ it on +the way. Well, doesn’t it seem good to be lookin’ at you again, Miss +Dosia! But I’m sorry Alexander isn’t in, too.” + +“Oh, I hope he’ll come before you leave,” returned Lois. It seemed a +foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the +nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure, +half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There +was a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive +recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over +which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect +on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, +when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent. + +Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while +Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of +Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word “home” +carried such suggested association that Dosia half forgot that it had +never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy. + +When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and +Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the +others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more. + +“Well, this is comfort,” he said, with a sort of wistful gratitude. +“I’ve been thinkin’ ’twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train, +but I’m sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young +ladies takin’ all this trouble for me—well, I just can’t tell you how I +appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside.” + +“You must get pretty lonely sometimes,” said Lois kindly, with a sudden +sympathy for something in his tone. + +He nodded slowly. “Well, yes, I do; but I’ve quit thinkin’ of it, as a +rule. I reckon I’ve got about as much as I deserve in this world, when +you come to sizin’ things up. If you get to pityin’ yourself, you slump; +you slump all _to_ pieces—ain’t no mortal good to yourself nor anybody +else. I’ve found _that_ out.” + +“You seem to find out a good many things,” said Lois, with a twinge of +assent. + +“Well, yes, I do.” His face relaxed in a pleased smile. “Keep addin’ to +my collection daily; but it isn’t cheap, no more than other +collectin’—costs money. Girard says—by the way, I never asked you if +you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the +train. I didn’t know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this +rabbit’s more’n good. I haven’t had one like it since I was with Girard +last year.” + +“No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois a little wearily. + +“Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought to. He’s a _man_. +Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s related to the Wilmots, Judge +Wilmot’s family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. +His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their +money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired of it myself. +I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money—or are +a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that’s +risin’ into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible +to walk on somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.” + +“How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia. + +“Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody ever +was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go through what he has, +though it’s made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after +they’d moved ’way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard +time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t +know that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what her mind +got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died at a little town in +Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn’t anyone to look after the +child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, +and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat +him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor +little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ mother, used to crawl into +the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry +his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever +talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a +snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas +story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into +the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_.” + +“How did he get away?” asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the +boy’s little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although +the hurt had been over so long ago. + +“Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn’t tell me the whole +of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he +went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own +people, too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba—I guess some of the +wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on +some government business; he’s a personal friend of the President. He’s +young, too, not more’n twenty-eight. He’s bound to get ahead at whatever +he sets himself to. But he’s got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly +kill a big Swede once that was wallopin’ a sick horse. What you laughin’ +at, Miss Dosia? I reckon we’re all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn’t +_that_ time, is it?” He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at +the clock that was striking. + +“I’m afraid it is,” affirmed Lois. + +“Then I’ve got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. ’Tisn’t +manners to eat and run, I know, but—” He had risen and was swiftly +putting on his coat in the hall. “Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can +get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin’. +Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your +hospitality; I do _so_. I—” He was loping down the path already, his +long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight. +Dosia called after him mischievously, “You’d better wait until the +twelve-three,” before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air +was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the +lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Cater’s presence had been. + +She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains +of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois +wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having +taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time +than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the +interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have +relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a +sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any +reminiscence whatever. + +He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and surprised to find +traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late. + +“Mr. Cater has been here,” announced Lois, in explanation. + +“Cater! I’m sorry to have missed him.” + +“He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not go until eleven, and +I was sure you would be in before that.” + +“Well, I meant to be.” + +“Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,”—something prompted her +against her will to say what had been rankling in her memory,—“he +thinks Mr. Martin is like a crab, and that he takes people in between +his claws and pinches them. I wish you’d be careful.” + +Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. “He will not pinch me, at +all events,” he said shortly. After a moment’s pause he made an effort +to return to his former manner, but with an altered tone: + +“I’m sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting with Selden +about the house; you can have the closet. After that we were all talking +at Leverich’s. He had a friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow, +extraordinarily interesting; he was giving us points on the South +American trade. He’s going to be of great use to us, he goes down there +again in the spring. He’s a fine-looking fellow, by the way, tall and +well set up; he reminds me of Brent, Lois—you remember him? The same +kind of bright, resolute face; only this man’s browner.” + +Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, Justin turned to +Dosia, who had slipped back into the room to look under the table and +chairs for a blue bow that had fallen from her hair. She stood now in +the doorway with it in her hand. + +“He came up from the South the same day you did last fall, Dosia, he was +in that wreck. It must have been a horrible thing.” Justin broke off at +the retrospection of the narrative. + +“Yes,” said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the door for support. + +“You were fortunate to get off so well.” Absorbed in his own recital, +Justin did not observe her. “He was going from one car to another when +the train went off the trestle—I don’t wonder you would never talk +about it, Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There was a +poor young girl who was alone, like you—he didn’t know what became of +her; he was ill himself in the hospital for two weeks afterwards. His +description of the whole thing was extraordinarily vivid.” Justin was +now bolting windows and putting out lights as he talked. “You two girls +must go to bed at once; it’s nearly twelve.” + +“What was his name?” asked Dosia. + +“His name? Why, I thought I’d told you. His name’s Girard—Bailey +Girard.” + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +“Reginald has the measles.” + +Lois made the announcement breathlessly, as she stood outside of the +drawing-room, addressing the visitors who sat on the sofa, talking to +Dosia. + +“The doctor has just gone, and he says it is the measles. I don’t +suppose I had better come in the room.” There was a tone of resentment +in her voice which seemed to originate in the idea of being excluded; in +reality, it was caused by the bitter thought that she had known for a +couple of days that Redge was not well, and that his father had been +exacting with him. “I really suppose I had better not come in.” + +“Oh, don’t mind me!” Mrs. Leverich, gorgeous in velvet and furs, spoke +reassuringly. “There are no children at our house, and I’ve had the +measles.” + +“Of course, it’s not scarlet fever,” continued Lois, dropping into a +chair, “or diphtheria. I suppose Zaidee will get it, and we have to be +quarantined. I don’t know what to do about you, Dosia.” She was feeling +the fell blow of a contagious disease, which upsets every previously +stable condition. + +“I’ve had the measles,” said the girl, but she added with quick anxiety: +“There are my lessons; do you suppose it will make any difference about +them? I don’t see how I can lose them now, and there’s that concert +Saturday.” + +“If we’re quarantined, you’re quarantined,” said Lois tersely. “If there +was _any_ place where you could go and stay——” + +“Mrs. Alexander, let her come to me,” said Mrs. Leverich warmly. “I’d +love to have her; I _really_ would. She can keep up with her lessons and +engagements just the same then. You know, I’m always so happy when I can +have a young girl in the house; and as for Mr. Leverich, nothing pleases +him better. Go and pack your trunk at once, my dear, and we’ll take it +on the carriage as we go back.” + +Dosia looked hesitatingly at Lois. + +“Why—I do not know,” said Lois, surprised, yet considering. + +“But _I_ do.” Mrs. Leverich spoke with a cordial authority that, after a +little more conversation, settled the matter. + +Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise little help of +Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from the closet and toilet +articles from the dressing-table, and in her efforts dropped the red +ribbon from her hair into the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, +swift huggings from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this +transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was something on +her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor below, she ran down to speak to +her, half dressed: “Lois, I hate to leave you here alone; I don’t mind +being kept from things, really and truly. Let me stay and help you with +dear little Redge.” For once her sympathy made her natural. + +“No, you had better go,” said Lois. She had but one desire—to be left +at liberty at last with her own. She added, to avoid further pleading: + +“I would rather be alone.” + +“Oh!” exclaimed Dosia, shrinking. But conscience had unexpectedly +claimed her, and she went on, hesitantly, with a painful timidity, her +color coming and going: + +“I wanted to ask—do you think I ought to go to Mrs. Leverich’s, after +what you said? Won’t Mr. Barr be there?” + +In the whole realm of the mother’s mind there was no room for anything +at present but her measles-smitten household. She looked at Dosia as if +making an effort to understand. “Why, yes, I suppose he will be there. +Just don’t have anything to do with him if you don’t want to. You will +not need to; he is out of the house most of the time, anyway.” + +“Oh, very well,” assented Dosia, chilled and yet relieved. The blood of +youth was already running riot at the delightful prospect of another +change. But she slipped into the nursery to kiss poor little feverish +Redge good-by, and leaned out of the carriage that was driving her away +to wave her hand again and again to Zaidee, whose red cheeks and little +snub-nose were pressed close to the window-pane. + +Mrs. Leverich was a woman who was somewhat below par in birth and +education, devoid of certain finer instincts, and used to an overflow of +luxury in her daily living that amounted sometimes to vulgar display. To +balance this, she was still handsome, if somewhat too stout, and +hospitable to a superlative degree. “Staying company” was a necessity to +her happiness. She had an absolute passion for making other people +comfortable, and surrounded her guests with a kindness and forethought +so enveloping that it almost spoiled them for contact afterwards with a +rude world. She really possessed in this regard an unselfish +good-heartedness, mingled with a sort of vanity that was pleased with +applause at its manipulations; her own comfort was indifferent to her +beside the subtler and warmer pleasure of being the source of good to +others. It is no figure of speech to say that she was willing to do +anything to promote the welfare of her guests; it was no hardship to +give up her own way in their interests, or to do any act, however tiring +and distasteful, that gave pleasure to anyone. She hated cards, yet she +would play long, tedious games with beaming incompetence, to make up a +hand; she disliked the smell of tobacco, but was never satisfied until +every man around her was happily supplied with cigars or pipes. Music +was a jangle to her, and any book above the caliber of the fiction which +displays a low-necked authoress upon the cover a weariness indeed; but +she would labor unceasingly to place both music and literature within +the reach of her guests. She had windows opened when she herself was +chilly, and fires lighted when she was suffering with the heat; she took +long drives in the hot sun when she would have much preferred a nap; she +chaperoned girls uncomplainingly until five o’clock in the morning. The +least wish of a guest, spoken or divined, was gratified if within her +power. It is true that she had a retinue of servants at her command, +but, if necessary, she would have served her guests with her own hands, +and had been known to do so. There was only one drawback to her +hospitality—she welcomed, but did not speed the parting guest. It was +difficult indeed to leave without a pitched battle, and the effort of +temporary disunion was so great as sometimes to result in a permanent +rupture of friendship. Her “I see—you don’t want to stay with us any +longer” voiced that injured feeling which blasts whatever it comes in +contact with, and which disclaimers serve only to heighten. Once away +from her, her interest in the former guest ceased almost entirely, no +matter how close the association had been under her roof; outside of it +everyone was lost in a haze which called for a distinct and wearying +effort, seldom undertaken, to penetrate. + +In appearance she was on the Oriental type of her half-brother, Lawson +Barr, but with a softness, both of expression and contour, which he did +not possess. She was ten years older than he. Her motions and the tone +of her voice were languid. Her husband—who enjoyed the benefits of +being the chief and permanent guest in this household—was extremely +fond of her, and proud of her beauty and popularity. Leverich was one of +those coarse-seeming and coarse-acting men who, nevertheless, come of a +race of gentlefolk, and who have innately, and no matter how much they +may choose to overlay the fact, certain traditions. He had been known to +say, in rebuttal of some criticism on his wife’s breeding, what was +quite true—that she was good enough for _him_; but he had, underneath, +a little contempt for her because she was. It was one of the traditions +that a man should find a quality in his wife to revere. + +Leverich liked to surround his wife with luxuries, to give her +everything that money could buy and that her gently sensuous temperament +craved. Her attachment was riveted to him by gifts of clothing and +jewelry and bric-à-brac as well as money—such things being to her the +only tangible evidences of affection. Dosia had hitherto seen the house +only as a caller. She was impressed now by the richness of the +furnishings above, as she was led up to her room, a large, many-windowed +apartment on the second floor. It was all a gleam of polished mahogany, +and brass and mirrors and silver toilet articles, blended with rose-silk +draperies; the alcoved bed was spread with a flowered silk counterpane, +the floors covered with rich Eastern rugs; easy-chairs and low tables +spread with books dotted the room; a couch piled high with down cushions +stood at a seductive angle. A maid glided forward to take Dosia’s hat +and cloak, while another knelt at the hearth to light the logs upon the +brass andirons, and Mrs. Leverich came in and out in an overflow of +solicitude. + +“I really think you had better rest. You _must_ be tired. No, of +course”—at Dosia’s laughing remonstrance—“the drive was nothing, but +the shock—a shock like that tells on you before you know it. Here comes +your trunk; have you the key? Elizabeth, unpack Miss Dosia’s trunk, and +get out a dressing-gown for her. I’m going to insist on your lying down +on the lounge for a while. Now, don’t do that, Elizabeth will take off +your shoes for you. And, Amelia,”—this to the maid at the +hearth,—“bring up some tea and biscuits. No, you don’t care for tea? +Well, a glass of sherry, then, and some hothouse grapes. My dear +Dosia,—you’ll let me call you Dosia, won’t you?—you may not feel the +need of it now, but it will do you good. I’m not going to stay with you, +I’ll just move this little table with the magazines on it near you, and +leave you to rest; but first I want to show you this.” She opened the +door of a smaller, hexagonal apartment adjoining. “I’m going to turn it +into a music-room for you.” + +“Oh, Mrs. Leverich!” protested Dosia, in amazement. + +“I’ve been thinking of it all the way home in the carriage. Of course, +you won’t want to practice down-stairs, where people are coming in and +out all the time; it would be very annoying to you. This has been used +as an extra dressing-room. I shall have those thick hangings taken down +and the furniture moved out, and put in light chairs and a cottage +piano, and a few palms over by the window. You’ll see!” + +“But, Mrs. Leverich——” + +“Now, don’t say a _word_; it’s all settled. Elizabeth will come to you +when it’s time to dress, so you need give yourself no anxiety about +that. Just let me draw this coverlet over you and tuck your feet in. +Now, how sweet you do look, to be sure!” + +Dosia did “look sweet,” and as comfortable and soft as a kitten. The +light-blue kimono of outing flannel,—of which she had been half ashamed +when the maid unpacked it,—though cheap, was becoming; her loosened +hair fell over the blended pillows and the rosy coverlet. The wood fire +at which she gazed crackled and sent out the pungent, aromatic smell of +Southern pine, which mingled with the perfume of a bunch of violets on +the table near the golden sherry in its crystal glass, and the plate of +white and reddish grapes. There was the unaccustomed stillness of a +large, well-appointed house, where the walls were deadened to sound, and +the floors had thick-piled rugs upon them, and the servants walked with +soft-shod feet. Such luxurious well-being had never been Dosia’s before. +This was like being in a fairy palace, where you had only to clap your +hands to get anything you wished for. And the most charming thing about +the fairy palace was that there you always met the prince. + +This girl was so constituted that, except in the first flush of +excitement incident to her entrance into this new sphere, she must have +always some heart-warm thought, some little inner pleasure of her own, +to make the larger one serve. Dosia knew now that she was to meet the +true prince. This was the house he visited; all this outer circle of +comfort was but the prelude to love—that mysterious and intangible love +that made you happy ever after. She was glad that she had kept hold of +that hand, and had not let herself be drawn away by lesser ties. Her +day-dream was to bewitch and dazzle him, to compel him to her +attraction; a dozen situations, based on that first idea of his +recognition of her in some noble deed, occupied her happy mind; in all +moments of extra exaltation she brought out the thought and played with +it and hugged it to her. She had yet to learn how few things happen as +we imagine them. + +In the midst of her half-drowsy musings, the door behind her burst open; +suddenly a big collie-dog bounded in. He was licking her cheeks, when a +sharp whistle called him back, and the door was instantly closed again. +Dosia knew that the dog was Lawson’s. She sprang up and locked the door, +but her dream had vanished. She had a tingling consciousness that she +was to meet Lawson at dinner. She made up her mind to be very dignified +and cool toward him; she rehearsed the manner in which her eyelashes +would fall, the politely bored expression of her forced attention, the +casual tips of her fingers as they touched his in the conventional +handshake of greeting—all of which would emphasize the fact that he had +now no particular interest for her, if, indeed, he had ever had any. + +But, after all, he was not at dinner, which was a relief, and yet a +disappointment: when you have sharpened your weapons, it is only natural +to want to use them. Lawson did not appear the next day, nor the next. +Once she heard him coming in very late at night, and in the morning he +had gone before she breakfasted. A couple of times in the late +afternoon, when the dog came trotting ahead through the hall, she had +slipped aside, breathless, as from some peril escaped. It was the third +day after her arrival that he suddenly made his appearance in the +drawing-room, where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of +music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought the air too damp +for Dosia. + +She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she had prefigured, +and could have flagellated herself for the color that she felt +enveloping her from brow to throat under his cool, appraising eyes, as +he bent over the piano as if to help her with her search. + +“What do you wish to find?” he asked in a businesslike way. “Perhaps I +can assist you.” + +“Thank you, it isn’t necessary.” + +She held her head at an unresponsive angle involuntarily, so that she +might not see his face, which had struck her as unexpectedly younger and +better-looking than hitherto. + +“I see that my sister has fitted up a little music-room for you. Have +you done much practicing there yet?” + +“Some.” + +“You are not homesick in your new quarters?” + +“No.” + +“Let me hold that portfolio for you.” He interposed a dexterous hand. +“Oh, don’t thank me—you see, if you drop it, courtesy will oblige me to +pick up all the music. This is the first time we’ve met since you have +been in the house; I’ve been so patient that I deserve more than to have +little cold, hard monosyllables thrown at me.” + +“Patient!” + +“Haven’t I seen you slip out of the way when you thought I was coming? +I’m accustomed to the phenomenon.” The lightness of his tone did not +hide the bitter strain under it. “Really, I’m not lacking in perception. +I wished to give you time to get inured to the sad fact that I live +here; and you need not have changed the time for your lessons last week, +for I have no regular time for my daily exodus at present. If you _will_ +keep your head so persistently turned away, you might as well utilize +the position. Play me something.” + +“No, you play for me,” returned Dosia, glad of the chance to divert his +attention from her. + +“I might play ‘Greeting,’ since I’m not going to get any.” + +He seated himself on the piano-bench she vacated, and played a few +strains absently; there was that in the low, sweet chords among which +his fingers strayed that could not but enchain. She forgot her aloofness +to listen. Presently he said: + +“Who is my rival?” + +“What do you mean?” She started up, and stood with both arms resting on +the lower end of the grand piano, staring at him. + +“I could not think that blush was for me—that beautiful color that +stole over you when I came in. It couldn’t be for me, when you have +avoided me so pointedly. So I concluded, of course, that it was either +the reflection from that brick wall out there, or was called forth by +the thought of my rival.” + +“I will not say that it was the brick wall,” said Dosia, yielding to the +light, heady spirit he always roused in her, with, also, the little +under-knowledge of her secret dream. + +“Then I will not say it was the rival,” said Lawson. He added in a lower +tone: “And I wouldn’t give it up to any rival; I saw it—it was mine.” + +“You claim a great deal,” returned Dosia, wishing that she had the +strength of mind to go and leave him, yet loath to lose a moment of this +converse. + +He shook his head as he answered gently: “No, you are mistaken there; I +claim nothing. I have no rights—only privileges. I hope it’s going to +be my privilege to have a little of your charming society in the next +few days. I shall be at home, perforce; I’ve lost my position.” + +“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Dosia, with her quick sympathy. He raised one hand +deprecatingly, while the other still weaved in and out in a pianissimo +accompaniment. + +“Sorry? For me? Oh, that’s not the thing to say, at all. You should +condemn my inability to keep the place.” + +“Why do you talk like this?” asked Dosia, with a pained feeling. + +“Why do you run when you see me coming?” He flashed a quizzical glance +at her. + +“I don’t,” she began to say, but her words trailed off into an +inarticulate murmur. + +He had played a chord or two more to her silence before he stopped to +lean forward and say: + +“Why did you avoid me on the train? You need not trouble yourself to +answer. Some kind person had warned you against being too polite to +me—and you took the warning like a good little girl. It has been borne +in upon me quite a number of times that I do not exactly command respect +in this community. I assure you that I know my place.” + +“But, oh, why don’t you _make_ people respect you?” cried Dosia. “Why +don’t you make them? If you really try—oh, if I were a man, I wouldn’t +sit quietly and say such things. You can do anything if you really try.” + +“Can you?” He smiled with indulgence at her copy-book wisdom. “Well, +perhaps you can, if there’s sufficient impetus to the effort. There +really isn’t with me. When I was a boy—you’ll tire yourself if you +stand up any longer. Come and sit over here by the fire.” + +She followed half mechanically to the sofa on which he arranged the +cushions for her, seating himself in the other corner, where he leaned +forward, looking, not at her, but at the fire. His personality was so +strong that each inch that lessened the distance between her and that +lithe, sinewy figure and the dark Oriental face brought a corresponding +thrill of magnetism to Dosia—a subtle excitement which drew her into +its spell. The confusion which had clouded her at first was gone; she +felt luminously clear, in preparation for some great moment of +confidence, in which her mission would be to help and sustain. She broke +the silence presently to say, with a sweet and halting diffidence, +through which her earnestness showed: + +“I want you to tell me. You began to say—I want to know about when you +were a boy.” + +“When I was a boy I made a wrong start. Heaven knows, it wasn’t my +fault! I was good enough before that—religiously inclined!” He leaned +forward and struck a log with one of the fire-irons, sending a shower of +sparks flying upward. “Where do you think I learned half the bad I know? +At a camp-meeting! But I won’t go back to the past—it’s a mistake. +Only, I came here literally ‘on suspicion.’” + +“Yes,” said Dosia, with her clear spirit-voice; “and you tried to work +up from under it.” + +Lawson dropped his chin into his hands, looking moodily ahead. “I’m +afraid not always. Sometimes the contrary.” + +“Oh, oh,” breathed Dosia, in a whisper. + +“If you want me to tell you the truth—! Your relatives are quite right +in ordering you to avoid me. There has never been anybody, you see, to +really care whether I kept straight or not.” + +“Your sister?” + +[Illustration: _He played a chord or two more to her silence_] + +Lawson shrugged his shoulders. “It would, of course, be pleasanter for +Myra if she hadn’t me on her mind, and Leverich has done his best, I +suppose. I’m not groaning—just telling you the bare facts. Living ‘on +suspicion’ is demoralizing in the long run, that’s all; one lives down +to an opinion as well as up to it, you know. There’s never been anyone, +since I was a child, to really believe in me, so there’s nobody to be +disappointed.” + +“_I_ will believe in you,” said Dosia, with the vibrating tone of her +emotion. Her clear eyes looked at his as if to convey strength and +warmth and all that was uplifting straight to his heart. + +“You had better not.” + +“I will believe in you!” Her tone had even greater insistence. “I know +what it is—myself—to be with those who do not care. You are not as +other people think you! You can be good and noble. You can”—her voice +sank to a whisper—“resist temptation. If one prays—it helps; I know +that.” Her voice rose steadily again, after a tremulous silence: “You +can never say again that no one believes in you, for I believe in you.” + +“And care?” asked Lawson. + +His eyes glittered and his face worked with some unusual emotion. + +“And care,” assented Dosia, with the same unwavering eyes and serious, +childlike candor of tone. + +He stooped and gently pressed his lips to her hand as it lay upon her +gown. “You are the very sweetest child! I—” He stopped abruptly, and +walked away to the window. The next moment Mrs. Leverich was rustling +into the room. + +If she suspected an interview too confidential, she showed nothing of it +in her manner. She had come back to take her guest out driving, after +all—the sun was shining. Dosia ran to get ready, tingling—was it from +the exaltation or the excitement of this interview, with its unexpected +compact? She trembled with the pathos of it all. She passed each phase +of it rapidly before her mind, to convince herself that there was +nothing in words or feeling, no, nor in that reverential homage of +Lawson’s, that could be interpreted as disloyalty to the unknown to whom +her future belonged. + +Mrs. Leverich was waiting with a magnificent wrap of velvet and fur for +Dosia to put on in the carriage over her street costume. + +“I was sure you were not warm enough yesterday,” she explained. She +leaned forward to call to the coachman: “James, you may drive first to +Benning’s. We are going to get some chocolates to take with us, dear; I +know girls always enjoy themselves more if there is a box of chocolates +handy.” + +“Oh, Mrs. Leverich!” said Dosia gratefully. + +“And we will stop at the greenhouse and get some flowers for you to wear +to-night at dinner; you know, George Sutton is coming. I want you to +look particularly well.” + +“I don’t care to look particularly well for _him_,” objected Dosia, +stiffening. + +“No, of course, you don’t _need_ to; but, still, a girl should always +look as pretty as she _can_; she can never tell who is going to see her. +James, ask at the express-office if there are any packages. I sent for +some of the new books. Yes, that is for me. Now, my dear, you’ll have +something nice to read.” + +“You are too good, Mrs. Leverich; you are just spoiling me,” said Dosia. + +In these three days she had been the recipient of so many gifts and +favors that it was difficult to know how to vary her expression of +gratitude. She had already been presented with a white China silk +tea-gown, the scores of two of the latest light operas, and an amethyst +belt-pin. The little music-room had been fitted out appropriately from +floor to ceiling, and framed with palms; Mrs. Leverich had spent the +whole of one morning with a corps of servants, planning, directing, and +approving. Dosia had hardly time to frame a wish before it was +forestalled. + +“It is such a comfort to me to have you here,” continued Mrs. Leverich, +sinking back among her cushions. “You may take the Five-mile Drive, +James. If I had only had a daughter! I said this morning to Mr. +Leverich, ‘I am going to pretend she’s my daughter while she’s here.’ +You don’t mind, dear? You will let me have you for my very own?” + +“Yes, indeed,” answered Dosia, with the warmth of youth. + +“I have never wished for a son. Boys are a terrible responsibility. +There is Lawson.” + +“Yes,” said Dosia, as she paused. + +“He has always been such a trial. We have given him every advantage—and +he _has_ every advantage naturally; but it’s no use. Mr. Leverich says +he will make one more effort for him, and if that is no use he must go. +We have simply done all we can. I would not speak so openly to you if +you had not been staying in the house, but you could not help hearing.” + +“Hearing——?” + +“Yes, these nights when he has come home so late. George Sutton brought +him home Tuesday night from the train—he couldn’t walk alone. I was so +ashamed at the noise!” + +“Oh!” breathed Dosia in a horrified undertone. She added, “Has he always +been like this?” + +“More or less. At first it was only when he went away; but he couldn’t +keep any position long, because he _would_ go away for days and days at +a stretch. And now it is getting to be—_any_ time. I’m sure we have +done everything in this world to keep it quiet. And Lawson has every +advantage naturally; it is only this—drinking. Of course, no one can +have any confidence in him; I always felt that it was hopeless, from the +first.” + +No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation as a ray of +light gilding this dark and slimy morass, the sight of which had +unexpectedly revolted her. In Balderville only the lower class of +inhabitants drank; no young man of respectability or position was to be +seen among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of her through +which she had promised to have faith? He had not posed as devoid of +offense; on the contrary, he had confessed to guilt, only she had not +quite understood. Sin as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite +decently presentable; it is only when it is particularized that the +monstrosities below are hideously revealed. + +“It must be a great grief to you,” she said now, with earnestness. + +“Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much on my mind after +this winter; he has put his foot down. The nights I have passed! I’m +always fancying that he is run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; +it’s the most dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream +on the way back—don’t forget; and those cakes at Mrs. Springer’s—they +were ordered yesterday. Where was I? I forget. Oh, yes—the most +dreadful strain! and I felt that I ought to speak about him to you, as +you are staying under my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after +the disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep up a +pretense any longer. You can see just what he is yourself.” + +“Yes, indeed,” said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent. + +Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot bouillon on her +return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted the logs in Dosia’s +room with her own fat, white, beringed hands, and enveloped the girl +enthusiastically several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in +confirmation of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty about +the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely responsive in +spirit to the least show of it, material demonstrations were unnatural +to her; she was shy of being touched even by her own sex. It was only +with little children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in +caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster had appealed so +strongly to her imagination was partly because of the fact that the +comfort it conveyed transcended the strangeness of contact. To be +pressed now to a warm, semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds +of mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarrassed gratitude, which +she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate to the occasion. And she +was weary of trying to elude the vacillations of her mind. She would +keep her promise to Lawson,—yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the +more he needed it,—but she would be very careful, too; she would be +_very_ careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to spring into being. + +He was at the dinner as well as Mr. Sutton. The sixth person was Ada +Snow, with the well-bred composure which concealed her innate shyness, +and in the white dotted swiss she had worn for ten years past, ever +since she had graduated, in fact, and which still looked decently +presentable. Dosia was gay and conversational, as she was expected to +be, the party being hers; she had began to feel the daughter of luxury, +if not of Mrs. Leverich, and accepted the honors with the easily +accustomed grace that is born of admiration and security, conscious +every moment through it all of that bond between herself and Lawson. He +looked boyish and happy. Later, in a talk about skating, he offered to +teach her to skate the next day if the ice held, and Mrs. Leverich, to +whom Dosia looked, expecting her to invent some excuse, approved at +once, and planned to send for skates the first thing in the morning. His +quizzical eye seized unerringly on the signs of withdrawal in her, and +brought the blush of compunction to her cheek, while Mr. Leverich +jocosely deplored that he could not take the office of trainer instead. +Mr. Sutton, who had sat by her at dinner, and hovered amorously over her +in the way a girl detests in a man she does not care for, might have +been mysteriously rebuffed by the suggestion of Lawson’s intimacy, for +he devoted himself for the rest of the short evening to Ada Snow, who +dropped into one of her statuesque angles on an ottoman, and talked to +him in her low, trained voice with modestly confidential deference, +until he left, quite early. His attention to Miss Snow had not kept him, +however, from picking up Dosia’s handkerchief twice when she happened to +drop it. + +Billy Snow created a diversion by coming in at half-past ten for his +sister, and stating casually that he had seen the doctor’s carriage +stopping at the Alexander house as he passed. + +“As you passed _now_?” cried Dosia, startled. “Are the children worse?” +An unacknowledged compunction, which she had felt through all her +pleasures, at leaving the sick household, sprang swiftly to the front. +“Oh, I’m so afraid Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there +at once and see!” + +“If they only had a telephone,” began Mrs. Leverich, for the twentieth +time. “I can send——” + +“Oh, if I could only go myself!” interrupted Dosia, looking utterly +miserable in her sudden wild anxiety. + +“You could have the carriage—but James is asleep.” Mrs. Leverich looked +almost as miserable as Dosia in her baffled hospitality. “But if you +don’t mind walking——” + +“No—oh, no!” + +“Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some wraps in the hall; +I’ll pin your dress up, so that you won’t need to take the time to +change it. _Must_ you go, Ada? Then you can all walk down together. Mr. +Leverich would have offered to go with you himself, I know, +Dosia,—wouldn’t you, Joseph?—if it were not for his cold. But Lawson +can take you, of _course_!” + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, had plenty to keep +her hands busy, and yet, as there was no particular anxiety attaching to +the disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the +unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of thought at the +same time, so that little occupations really occupied only a small +corner of her mind, and the larger part was continually taken up with +the subject of larger interest—herself. While she rocked the children +and sang to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, and +took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, she was +unceasingly traversing a country wherein she walked alone and in exile. +The quarantine had shut her in more rigorously upon herself; there were +now no distractions. Her husband was more anxious about the children +than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so much was thrown +upon her; he had wanted to get a trained nurse at once, but after her +assurances that she did not mind staying in, that her exertions did not +tire her, and that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted +this version without further question or comment, and went about his +affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her own department. It is +a well-known fact that quarantine, the observance of which is exacted +down to the last second of its limit from the women of a household, does +not affect the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin +thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as possible +about being much with the children. He stood obediently outside of the +nursery door and talked to them from there when Lois said, “You had +better not come in.” When she refused a service offered by him, he did +not press it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his +dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again to spend the +long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, at houses where there +were no children to be kept from contagion, and where he could talk to +men. He was really so busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in +any way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to be able to +leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, besides, a curious +hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously resented—she seemed to +hold herself aloof from him, and there was no allurement to follow. That +temporary indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, +with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference because they do +allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship at will—this had been +pushed too far. It is a dangerous thing to let love slip away, even for +the pleasure of regaining it. + +It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should have to stand +alone now. She could have done this willingly if she had been by +herself, but to stand alone in this dual solitude, where she might have +had support—she could not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with +the pity of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, +red-eyed, upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of her +effort. + +There is little provision made in most girlhood for that independence of +living which marriage unexpectedly forces upon a woman, in many +instances, in almost as great a degree as when she is thrown out into +the world upon her own resources. To be high and fine, rational and +spirited, cheerful and loving, quite by one’s self, without audience or +applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the muscles are little +trained. A woman can reach almost any height on a spurt for praise or +recognition; but to get up, sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, +care for the children, order the meals, as a rational human being whose +business it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no +personality attached to it—to have it taken for granted that she would +naturally order her life as suited her best, and desired no +interference—it was like being pushed out into the cold. + +If Justin’s indifference was unexplainable to Lois, it was equally +mysterious to him that she expected daily to be urged to seek amusement, +to “take something” for her cold, to stay in if it were wet or to go out +if it were dry, to avoid overwork, not to sew too much, and to be sure +and rest in the afternoon—all the little kindly round of woman’s +sympathies that keep the heart warm. Justin had been brought up in the +good old-fashioned way by a mother who, while requiring obedience and +honesty from her sons, never required them to think of anybody else. In +his conduct now he did entirely as he would be done by. He hated to be +noticed, himself, in little ways; he did as he pleased, with the +directness that is the inheritance of centuries of predominance, but he +had become affectionately parrot-wise in some of the sentences he found +were conducive to his wife’s happiness. In his new absorption he had +forgotten the sentences; he was deeply occupied with his own affairs. +When Lois said to Zaidee, “Mamma is busy; she cannot attend to you now,” +she exemplified unconsciously her husband’s present position toward +herself. Many men regard women primarily in the light of children; and +the more occupied Justin became in his own affairs, the more reluctant +he became to talk of them at home to this child who was his wife. Her +vivid surprise at normal conditions, the unnecessary worry and shallow +generalization of ignorance, irritated him. He became more and more +taciturn, though he was always kind and affectionate, even if his +kindness and affection lacked, as she felt, the true inner glow; but in +the state of mind which Lois had now made her own, no evidence of +affection, however great on the part of her husband, would have meant +anything to her more than momentarily, for it was seen afterwards +through a medium which at once distorted and nullified, and not even the +complete absorption in and surrender to herself that she craved could +have satisfied the insatiable. She was drifting to a place among the +great and terrible company of nerve-centered people, revolving wheels of +centripetal force, sweeping into their own restless orbit all with which +they come in contact as they go on their devastating way through the +universe. + +Dosia, on the night when she had hurried down to the house with Lawson +Barr, had found nothing out of the ordinary; the doctor had been delayed +until late by a case of more insistence, that was all. She came down, +however, on other evenings, luxuriously cloaked and wrapped, rosy and +smiling, with radiant eyes, and held rapid conversations with Lois +down-stairs, while Lawson waited in the hall, or sometimes went on +farther and came back for her. Lois herself had never considered Lawson +of importance, although she had warned Dosia against him; his +sympathetic manner now pleased her. As the children improved, the +measles threatened to become at once epidemic and more virulent in the +town, so that it was thought wise to avoid comment by having no +communication by daylight with the Alexander household. Dosia was thus, +for a few minutes at a time, Lois’ one social link with the outside +world, for Justin, as she said bitterly, told her nothing. After three +weeks of solitude and self-communing the barriers began to give way. + +She was glad to hear her husband come in one afternoon much earlier than +usual. Something had been said the day before about her going out for a +drive. Her heart beat at the sound of his voice, and she ran down-stairs +eagerly, but checked herself, as she had a way of doing lately, when she +came near him. Her face, devoid of expression, was lifted to his to be +kissed; for all her forbidding manner, she was ready to thaw if he would +only take the trouble to shine directly upon her. It was a beautiful +spring afternoon, and she felt the invading monitions of happiness, in +spite of herself, as he kissed her, saying at once hurriedly, if very +kindly: + +“I’ve got to dress and take the five-o’clock train back to town.” + +“Oh!” She was chilled to ice. “Won’t you be here to dinner?” + +“Why, no. Girard—do you remember my speaking of him? He’s sent me a +ticket for the Western Club dinner in town to-night. There will be fine +speaking; not that I care for that particularly, but it is really +important for me to be there. There are not many tickets; I’m in luck to +get one.” He stopped irresolutely. “You don’t mind my going? I thought +you’d be with the children.” + +“No, I don’t mind your going.” She added under her breath, “And it +wouldn’t make any difference to you if I did.” + +“What did you say?” + +“Nothing.” + +“If it were any place to which you could have gone with me, I would have +refused.” + +“Oh!” + +He looked at her uneasily, but said no more; she heard him whistling +softly as he was getting dressed. In reality his conscience was +uncomfortably pricking him. He felt that he had let her bear too much +alone, that he might have been more thoughtful—he couldn’t exactly tell +how. He registered a mental vow to take her out somewhere the very first +chance he got. + +He came in the nursery to say good-by to the children and to her. She +asked: + +“What train will you take back to-night?” + +“I don’t suppose I can get anything earlier than the twelve.” + +“You mean the one that gets here at a quarter to one?” + +“Yes, of course. Don’t sit up for me.” + +He was gone; the door had closed behind him—he was gone. Almost before +she realized it, he was gone. It could not be—she was not ready to have +him go yet! There were so many things she had meant to say to him. She +would have rushed to the door to call him back, but Redge cried out for +her. She took him from his crib and ran to the window with him, over the +floor that was strewed with play-things—Justin was already nearly out +of sight. He must, he must, he _must_ come back again! He must. She +willed it so intensely that he must feel it, if he loved her, and come +back. If you willed things hard enough, they happened; people said so. +She was willing, willing, _willing_ him to come back. She watched the +clock, and listened for the sound of the passing train. Seven minutes to +walk to the station—seven minutes to walk back again, as she willed him +to come. Thirty minutes had passed; he had stopped here, there, or yon, +on his way home. An hour—and he had not come! She had willed in vain. +He had gone. + +From six o’clock until a quarter of one,—until one o’clock, for the +midnight train was always late,—that was seven hours. Seven hours to +wait, seven hours to think and think. She gave the children their +supper; she laughed with them, she played with them, helped the nurse +undress them, sang them to sleep, with that dreadful undercurrent of +thinking all the time. She had her dinner, eating without knowing what +she ate, trying to take a long while at it. Afterwards she lighted the +lamp in the little drawing-room, took out her sewing, and sat down there +to wait. There were five hours and a half yet. + +There was a ring at the door-bell about eight o’clock, which proved the +herald of little Mrs. Snow, holding in one hand a provisionary vial. + +“No, thank you, I won’t sit down,” she said, in answer to Lois’ +invitation. “I just ran over to see if you could let me have a little +cough medicine for William to-night, he has a little tickle in his +throat that keeps him coughing, I knew it was no use telling _him_ to +get any medicine, so I said to Bertha, ‘Bertha, I’m just going to run +over to Mrs. Alexander’s and see if she can lend me a spoonful of cough +mixture.’ I’ll have my bottle renewed to-morrow.” + +“I’m sorry,” said Lois, wondering at her power of suspending a +heartbreak, “but we haven’t a drop left in the house.” + +“There is so much bronchitis around now,” continued Mrs. Snow, oblivious +of the fact that the same impetus that had brought her as far as the +Alexanders’ would have taken her to the druggist’s. “No, thank you; I +can’t sit down.” + +She stood by the mantel in a drooping attitude that gave her a plaintive +effect, in combination with her soft crinkled black garments and her +small white, delicate, finely wrinkled face. Mrs. Snow had, as a usual +thing, only two tones to her voice—the plaintive and the inquisitive; +the former was in evidence now. + +“There is so much bronchitis around now. I think if you can take hold of +it at the first beginning, with a little cough medicine, when it’s just +a tickle in the throat, you can often save a great deal.” + +“I suppose you can,” said Lois. She felt a vague duty of conversation. +“Isn’t William well?” + +His mother shook her head. “No, my dear, not at all, though he will not +own it. I ask him every time he comes in the house how he feels, and +sometimes he won’t even answer me.” She heaved a sigh. “You’re not +looking well yourself, Mrs. Alexander; you mustn’t take care of the +children too hard.” + +“Oh, nothing ever hurts _me_,” said Lois in a hard voice. + +“I’m glad they’re so nearly well. I met Mr. Alexander to-night on his +way back to town. It was a pity you couldn’t have gone with him; if you +had sent for me, I could have come and stayed with the children as well +as not.” + +“Oh, thank you,” said Lois. + +“I suppose you don’t see much of Miss Dosia?” + +“No, not much as yet.” + +Mrs. Snow cleared her throat deprecatingly. “A number of people have +been asking me lately if she and Mr. Barr were engaged.” + +“Engaged! Why, of course not,” exclaimed Lois contemptuously. “There is +not the slightest question of such a thing; in fact, she dislikes him. +He simply takes her around because she is at his sister’s.” + +“Oh!” said Mrs. Snow, “Miss Dosia dislikes Mr. Barr—does she really, +now! I’m sure I told everybody that I knew they couldn’t be engaged, +although they do seem to be so much together. So she dislikes him; Ada +dislikes him, too. There’s something about Mr. Barr so—well, you can’t +exactly tell what it is, can you, but it’s there; something that’s not +exactly like a gentleman—not like Mr. Sutton. Ada likes Mr. Sutton so +much. It’s such a relief to me to find that Miss Dosia is so sensible; +she’s a sweet young girl—a little fond of attention, perhaps, but many +young girls _are_. No, I thank you, my dear, I cannot sit down, I _must_ +go now. I don’t think you’re looking well; you must be careful and not +overdo.” + +“Oh, nothing hurts me,” said Lois again, with a peculiar little smile. +The insinuation about Dosia did no more than swell the undercurrent of +bitterness by another unnecessary drop. + +And Mrs. Snow was gone. Lois had not wanted her, but how alone it was +now! Even Mrs. Snow had seen that she did not look well—had pitied her. + +The children were asleep up-stairs, the maids were in the kitchen. The +clock in the hall ticked. People walked past the house: a man +alone—another man; young people, laughing and catching up with those +ahead; some shuffling, hobbling toilers; then the light step of a woman +returning from work; then another man. Occasionally, but not often, a +carriage rolled down the street. The footsteps were always clear and +distinct from the corner below to the upper crossing; when it was a +train-time, there were more footsteps coming and going—between trains +only the solitary footsteps again. She heard the man in the house across +the street run up the steps to his front door, and turn the key in the +lock. The door opened and shut behind him. The clock in the hall struck +the half-hour—it was half-past eight. Oh, if there had been a life-time +of misery in that last half-hour, what was there to come? An eternity, +an eternity of desolation! + +If she were to will him now to come home, if in the midst of the +glittering lights and flowers he could hear her cry to him,—“_Justin, I +want you!_”—he would _have_ to come. “Justin, I want you!” She rose and +paced the floor, sobbing out the words. No, he would not hear her—he +did not want to hear her. Perhaps he was laughing now. She would have +gone to _him_, if he had wanted her, though she had had to crawl upon +her knees through thorns and briers. Ah, how she would have gone! A rush +of blinding tears filled her eyes. He did not care. She had been ready +to cling to him, and sob her heart out on his breast, and beg him to +love her and kiss her and stay with her, and he had not seen. She had +asked—in the tone that mutely pleaded—_You will not leave me so +long?_—“The train that gets here at a quarter to one?” and he had +answered, “Yes, of course.” That was all. If her lips had touched his so +coldly when he had said good-by, it was because she had longed to have +him notice it, and ask her why. But he had not noticed the coldness, he +had not asked her why. He had not wanted any more warmth in her. He did +not care! + +There came swift moments in those long and passion-freighted hours when +the darkened, distorted vision cleared in wonderful flashes that brought +the healing of light. In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, +not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of +frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy +mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had +won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly +beloved, the true owner of her husband’s heart, a woman whose work it +was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more +his helper, his lover. Even as this glimpse was shut out again, there +was the piercing thought: If that were real, and what her darkened eyes +beheld untrue! Things are what they are, no matter how one’s distorted +vision sees them. If it were really true, no matter how she saw it now, +that she was a wife tenderly beloved, with happiness within her grasp, +and a miserable woman indeed only that she was blind to its +possibilities! She had said, _The train that gets here at a quarter to +one?_ with what a longing for him not to leave her, and he had answered, +_Yes, of course_. Nothing could make those words any different. And she +wanted him, and he did not care—he did not care. Justin, Justin! The +long, long, torturing fangs of self-pity had her by the throat. + +The house was silent, the children slept, the maids had gone up-stairs. +The hours wore on into the night. The footsteps passed up and down the +street only at long intervals. The air grew chill in the house. In the +quiet, the watcher could hear the trains far, far off across the flats. + +At twelve o’clock the spring rain began to fall, gently at first, and +then in torrents, coming straight down with a rushing sound that blotted +out both trains and footsteps. And the train was late, as she had said +it would be, it was after one o’clock when Justin ran up the steps with +that firm, quick tread of his, opened the door, and came in. His face +was bright and eager; he was full yet of the pleasure of the evening, +and anxious to make her a sharer of it. He turned to speak to his wife, +and the glow on his countenance died out instantly as with a breath from +the tomb. + +Lois sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing him. The light had gone out +in the lamp, and the one gas-burner above, with its meager flicker, cast +the room into the desolate half-shadows that speak of the late hours of +the night. She had worn a scarlet house-gown in the evening; the +trailing folds swept the floor around her slippered feet now, her bare +arms gleamed below the sleeves that only reached beyond the elbow. +Around her was flung a gray cloak, buttoned askew at the throat, and in +one of her folded hands she held a black lace scarf. Her face was white, +and her large eyes stared straight before her rigidly, yet with a wild +gleam in them; as he looked at her she rose and moved as if to pass him. + +He stepped forward with his dripping overcoat half off. + +“Where are you going?” + +She made no answer, but looked at him as she edged on farther to the +door. + +“Where are you going? Answer me.” + +Her lips stiffly framed the word: “Out.” + +“Out! What do you mean?” He spoke roughly, in a terrible anxiety and +anger mixed together. “What are you working yourself up to all this +foolishness for?” + +Again she did not answer. + +He went on more sternly, yet with an undercurrent of entreaty: + +“Come in here and take off those things and be rational. Why do you look +at me like that?” + +“You don’t care—any more.” + +Oh, if he would snatch her to him now, and press her to his breast, that +she might feel his protecting arms around her! If he would kiss her now +with the kisses she remembered, and love her, and comfort her, and send +this horrible spirit out of her! How could he not know that that was the +way to exorcise it, that it was what her spent soul craved? How could he +keep from putting his arms around her when she was in agony? + +Never in his life had her husband been less likely to do so. The wild +defiance in her eyes would have made any woman repulsive to him; he had +all a man’s horror of a “scene,” mingled with a deeper disgust that she +should be the actress in it, and his anger was the more that he felt the +whole thing to be unnecessary. Underneath this anger, however, was the +sense of responsibility for his wife’s welfare, such as one would have +for a child, no matter how outrageous. + +“You don’t care!” She whispered the words again. + +“No, I don’t care for you when you act like this.” His voice was even +sterner now; it was time that this travesty came to an end. + +She stared at him as before. “Then I’ll go!” she said wildly, and +slipped past him out of the door and into the rain, running with swift +yet uncertain footsteps down the black, wet street, listening, listening +all the time for him to follow—listening as she ran. She walked more +slowly now as she listened; she had gone nearly a block already toward +the river. Oh, would he let her go? For one awful moment she feared that +this phantasm might become a reality; and yet she knew, as well as she +knew that she lived, that he would not let it be so. Yes, yes, there was +his quick, sharp tread at last, gaining on her. He walked like the angry +man he was, but the sound brought a furtive thrill of bliss to her. How +strong he was when he was angry! He had had to notice her at last; he +could think of nothing but her now. + +She trembled as he came up to her. He only said in a matter-of-fact +tone, “It’s time to stop this now; you’ll get wet.” He took her by the +arm and turned her around, heading for home; the mere touch of his +guiding hand on her arm sent warmth through her icy veins. She trembled +as her feet tottered beside his, her strength suddenly spent with the +breaking up of her long passion. + +Neither spoke as they walked home. When they were in the house again, he +unfastened her cloak with awkward fingers, and took the dripping scarf +from her wet hair, throwing them on a chair. + +She leaned her head upon his breast, clinging to him with an +inarticulate murmur for forgiveness, and he smoothed her hair for a +moment. She raised her face to his to be kissed, and he kissed her. She +humbly asked nothing; she would be satisfied with anything now. She went +up to her room, as he bade her, and when she was in bed, he came and sat +down by her, and held the hand she mutely placed in his, as her +imploring eyes asked. But he had to put a force upon himself to do it. +The whole play was distasteful and repugnant beyond words to him; it +weakened every bond that bound him to her. He sought for no +self-analyzing causes. He had so much care upon him now that more than +ever in his life before he needed diversion, sympathy, love, rest—rest +above everything else on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +To live in the same house, to meet not only at the accepted times, but +in all the little passing ways—on the stairs, coming in and out of the +door; to meet also in all the little unpremeditated ways that are really +premeditated—the going to the library for a book, the searching over +this, that, and the other, with all its pretended inconsequence and +surprise; the abstraction of two people from the same room at the same +time on different pretexts; the lingerings while the minutes grew toward +the hour, the sudden hurried partings at a foot-step, the reunion for +just a moment more when the foot-step did not come that way—all this +unnoticed and casual intercourse with its half-secrecy and hint of the +forbidden becomes a large factor in its relation to after-events, when +the participants are a man and a woman. There is no influence so little +regarded for the young by those in authority as the tremendous influence +of propinquity. + +Among all the social comings and goings at the Leverichs’, the +excitement of Lawson’s presence held its place with Dosia. The sudden +sight of his olive profile and his lithe figure, his cool, appraising +gaze, his “Well, young lady?” with its ironic tone that yet conveyed a +subtle kindness, his lazy, caressing expostulation, “Why not, when we +are friends?”—these things made heart-beats that Dosia took pains to +assure herself were of a purely Platonic nature, when she stopped at +rare occasions to take tally of her emotions, though there was a +continual unacknowledged inner protest, in spite of her yielding, which +made her resolve each day to withdraw a little on the next. But they +never talked of love; they talked only of goodness, or art, or music, or +about the way you felt about different subjects, or little teasing +things, like why she drew her mouth down at the corners when he looked +at her, or why she had seemed to disapprove the night before. They were +bound together by the hope of higher things. She met him always in the +morning with the bright uplifting smile that said, “I know you will +repay my confidence—for _I_ believe in you!” + +“I really wish Lawson would go away,” said Mrs. Leverich, one day, as +the two sat over their afternoon tea together. + +“Why?” asked Dosia, with the suddenly concentrated composure his name +always brought her outwardly. “I thought you said last week that he had +improved so much.” + +“Oh, yes, he’s had one of his good streaks lately; and he _is_ a sweet +fellow when he’s nice—he was the dearest _little_ boy! Lawson can twist +me around his little finger when he wants to; he knows that he can get +money out of me every time, even when he oughtn’t to have it. But he +can’t keep up this sort of thing long, you know, he is so restless; +there’s bound to be a breakdown afterwards. I dread it; the breakdowns +get worse, now, every time.” + +“Perhaps there will be no breakdown, after all,” said Dosia, in an even +voice, but with that sudden deep sensation of disenchantment which his +sister’s words always brought to her, and which lay upon her spirit like +a living thing, dragging her fancy in chains. It was not alone Mrs. +Leverich’s words, either, that had this power; when anyone spoke of +Lawson it brought the same displeasing uneasiness, followed by the +wonted eager remorsefulness later, when she saw him. But through each +phase one foundational sense held good—he was not at all the kind of +man she would ever want to marry; the whole attraction of the situation +was in the fact that one could be so nobly intimate, and still keep off +the danger-ground. Once or twice he had seemed to be infringing on it, +and then she had turned him aside with sweet solemnity and additional +inner excitement. + +These were days indeed! It was Lent, but there were all the minor +pleasures of luncheons and card-parties, and little evening +entertainments held at Mrs. Leverich’s hospitable mansion. It mattered +not whether there was anything going on in the town or not; society +focused at her house, with Dosia for the central point. When she thought +of going back again to Lois it was with a blank shiver. + +Lois, indeed, had not been well lately; the children were out of +quarantine, but she had a sore throat, and kept her room under the care +of a trained nurse. Dosia had not seen her, but only Justin, who looked +tired and older. Dosia was not to return now until after Easter and +after the ball—Mrs. Leverich was going to give a ball for Dosia; it was +to be, in a sense, her “coming out.” + +She had by this time become quite used to her position as daughter of +the house, accepted luxuries as a matter of course, and even suggested +improvements, when she found that it pleased Mrs. Leverich to have her +do so. She received that lady’s embraces gracefully, brought newspapers +unasked for Mr. Leverich, and gave orders to the maids for her hostess. +She had grown accustomed to being waited on, petted, made much of, and +given presents, and blossomed like the rose under this vernal shower of +kindness; her dress, her manner, her very expression, betrayed the ease +of elegance. She did not like to own, even to herself, that long +conversations with Mrs. Leverich were somewhat tiresome when the subject +was neither Lawson nor herself, and she learned to get out of the way of +too many tête-à-têtes. This did not keep her from having a fervent +gratitude for all the blessings of the situation, and a real love for +the dispenser of them. Now, when the time of her stay was narrowing to a +close, she clung to each day as if it neared the end of life; every +pleasure was doubly dear in that it was the last of its kind. To be +sure, the fairy prince had not arrived as yet—Bailey Girard, who had +come to the house while she was still a stranger to it, had been half +across the Continent since. It is one of the shabby jests that life is +always playing us, that two who have met once as wayfarers on the same +road, with the memory of that one meeting so curiously vivid and +intimate that it seems as if the fate of the next turning must bring +them within touch again, are yet kept out of sight or sound of each +other for miles by the slight accidents of travel. Fate, when we count +upon her, is apt to be extraordinarily slow in working out her +fulfillments. + +Dosia hailed with delight a proposition made by Mrs. Leverich to get up +a party and drive over one evening to a neighboring town to hear a +lecture given there by a friend. The lecture was nothing, the friend not +a very great attraction, but the expedition in itself gave an excuse for +a drive, and a supper on the return to the Leverich mansion. It was +early April, but the weather was unseasonably warm, and there was a +golden moon. They were to go in a “barge”—the local name for a long, +low, uncovered wagon, with two lateral seats, holding about thirty +people. Mrs. Leverich had insisted on plenty of lap-robes and extra +wrappings and even umbrellas, in spite of remonstrances. She herself +could not go, but there were plenty of chaperons, little Mrs. Snow +having been pressed into service as a substitute at the last moment, +with every promise of mild evening weather especially beneficial to +rheumatism. + +Some one had a bugle that woke the echoes as the caravan drew up at each +door to gather the different segments of the party. Dosia felt wild with +glee as she bundled into the barge, amid merry shrieks and laughter, and +found herself seated by Mr. William Snow, while Lawson took the place on +the other side of her. Ada and Mr. Sutton were farther down, with Mrs. +Snow near them. Opposite Dosia was a chaperon of the chaperons. + +Dosia hardly knew what she was saying as she laughed and talked with the +crowd, while Lawson conversed across with Mrs. Malcolmson, but the sense +of his nearness never left her. Billy at last got a chance to say to her +in a low, intense voice: + +“Why are you always listening for what _he_ says?” + +Her glance followed his, and her color rose. + +“Dear little Billy is rude; Billy must learn manners,” she retorted +gayly, but with a sharpness below the gayety. + +“I don’t care whether it’s rude or not. Here I’m sitting by you for the +first time this week, and you don’t seem to hear a word I say. I’ve been +trying to talk to you, and you don’t pay the slightest attention.” + +“Oh, you poor child!” said Dosia. “Would it like some candy?” + +“It’s no use talking to me like that,” returned William stubbornly. “I +know you’re a year older than I am——” + +“Two,” interpolated Dosia. + +“It’s seventeen months and three days—but that’s nothing to do with it. +It’s no use your trying the grandmother act—I could marry you, just the +same, if I _am_ younger. Mrs. Stanford is two years older than her +husband, and Mrs. Taylor is five years older than hers. Lots of people +do it—but that’s not the point now. I’m miles older than you in +everything but years. I’ve had experience of the world, and you +haven’t.” His belligerent tone softened, and he looked at her tenderly +as he towered above her, his blue eyes alight. “You need somebody to +take care of you. I don’t care whether you believe it or not, I know +what I’m talking about. I wish you’d drop that fellow.” + +“Why?” asked Dosia, with dangerous calm. + +“Why? Because—you ought to know. He isn’t a gentleman; he’s no good. He +isn’t _fit_. If he was, don’t you think he’d look out for you, and not +take advantage the way he does? If he had a decent spark in him, he’d +never let you be seen with him; he knows it, if you don’t. Why, there +have been times I’ve seen him when you wouldn’t pick him up off the road +with a pair of tongs.” + +“Mr. Barr, will you fasten this cloak around me?” said Dosia, in a clear +voice. + +She turned with her back to William and leaned a little closer to +Lawson, after he had helped her arrange the garment. Lawson had made +every resolution to take no advantage of his position, but he was not +proof against this alluring moment; his warm hand with its long, +tapering fingers sought hers under cover of the lap-robe, and held it +while he still talked with apparent unconcern to his matronly vis-à-vis. +Once he looked around at Dosia with those teasing eyes full of laughter, +and yet of something more. She could not drag her hand away without +betraying the struggle, as his closed more tightly over it, though her +riotous heart beat so that she feared it must get into her voice, and +there was an odd feeling as if she were doing some one a wrong. Her +fluttering was intoxication to Lawson. + +They drove for five miles with the early spring moonlight shining +silverly through the last rosy haze of the sunset, the air sweet with +the scent of green grass and dewy blossomings. + +Lawson did not look at Dosia as he helped her out of the wagon, nor did +he come in to listen to the lecture, through which she sat pulsating at +the thought of the drive home, desiring yet fearing it. Would he be near +her then? Her question was answered. He helped to put everyone else in +the wagon, and they two came last. This time their opposite neighbors +were a young couple engrossed in each other. Dosia’s quick eye took in +the situation at once. She was determined not to speak first, and they +rode for a while in silence; then he moved nearer, and asked in a low +tone: + +“Why don’t you look at me?” + +“Why did you—hold my hand?” She spoke in a whisper that he had to bend +his head to hear. + +“I might tell you a good many reasons—but one will do. I am going away +for good.” + +“What?” She turned breathlessly, with a quick pang. The night had grown +very dark, but she could see the gleam of his eyes and the outline of +his olive face as it leaned over her. “Why?” + +“Because—” He stopped, and his quizzical look changed into something +deeper. “I believe I ought to. I’ve had a sort of an offer out West, and +it’s time I made a change.” + +“Is it to lead a new life?” asked Dosia, with deep and tender solemnity. +Mrs. Leverich’s words came back to her; this, then, had been all +planned. + +“Oh, let us always hope so!” said Lawson lightly. “Who knows? Perhaps +I’ll turn into a highly respectable individual and make money. You can’t +be respectable without money, I’ve tried it, and I know. I had a sort of +an opening in Central Africa which my dear brother-in-law pressed upon +me, but I decided against it.” + +“Central Africa!” + +“Yes. I appreciated Leverich’s feelings in the plan—you can’t get back +easily from Central Africa, if you get back at all. So I’m going, for +good or bad, to a nice little mining-camp in Nevada, where you get your +mail every six weeks or so, and where you can go down into your grave +any way you please without scandalizing your friends. I’ll be really +quite out of the way.” + +“Out of the way!” Her heart leaped with pride in him. How little William +knew of this man! + +“Yes, out of everybody’s way—and yours, dear little girl. I’m not good +enough for much, but perhaps I’m good enough for that.” + +“Oh,” said Dosia, distressed and fascinated by his tone of real feeling. +“But why—oh, I shall miss you so much—and think of you—so much!” Her +voice broke. “I can’t bear to think of your going off in this way—so +lonely.” + +There was a shriek from farther down the barge. “It’s beginning to rain, +it’s beginning to rain!” A wild scramble ensued for cloaks and +umbrellas. A furious shower was descending almost with the words, and +the whole party slid off the two long seats into the straw on the bottom +of the barge, and cowered under the carriage-robes pulled up around them +for a shelter, showing only a mass of umbrellas above. + +Lawson’s quick movements had insured Dosia’s protection. + +“You are not getting wet at all?” He bent over her tenderly under the +enveloping umbrella. + +“Not at all,” she whispered. + +It was as if everything were a confidence now. She reverted to the +subject of their conversation: + +“Oh, do you think you will really not come back?” + +He laughed. “Yes, I mean it—now. Of course, you know that’s my chief +fault—my resolutions are too frequently writ on sand.” He spoke of his +own weakness with the bitter yet facile contempt which too often +enervates still more instead of strengthening. “Yes, I mean it. Do you +wonder I took your hand? Are you sorry I’m going—? is my little friend +sorry? She mustn’t be sorry; you know, nobody is sorry—she must be glad +to get rid of inc. Speak—and say it.” + +“No,” whispered Dosia. + +He pressed her arm close to him, as he held her hand and pulled the +wraps around her, shifting the umbrella as the wind changed. One of the +men in front lighted a lantern and held it out in the rain at arm’s +length, to glimmer ahead in the pitchy darkness and show the road to the +driver, who held the horses at a walk. The wagon lurched and tipped in +mud-holes and unexpected ridges and depressions, running up once on the +edge of a bank, while the couples on the floor of it screamed and +laughed. There were muttered rolls of thunder in the distance. Rain in +the night had always brought back the scene of the disaster to Dosia, +but she only thought now that she could not think. All of her that lived +was living at this moment here. + +“Why are you so silent?” he murmured headily, after an interval. + +“I don’t know.” + +“Is there anything else that you want to tell me?” + +“I don’t know.” + +“Oh, yes, you do.” His voice had grown dangerously tender. “What is it?” +He waited again, bending nearer. “Don’t you want me to leave you—is +that it? Don’t you want me to leave you?” + +“No,” whispered Dosia. + +“Then I’ll stay!” + +His arm slid exultingly around her waist, and his hand pressed her head +down upon his shoulder, while she submitted passively, a thing of +suffocating heart-beats and burning blushes, captive to she knew not +what. “You oughtn’t to have said that, you know, for now I’ll never go. +I’ll stay with you. Hush—keep still!” He held her firmly as some one +spoke from the front, and he answered in a loud tone: + +“Yes, Mrs. Malcolmson, it’s the right road. Swing the lantern a little +further around, Billy. Yes, that’s the old white house; we turn +there—it’s all right.” + +He kept his attitude of attention for a few minutes, looking from under +the cover of his umbrella at the huddled heaps and the umbrellas in +front of him. Then Dosia felt that he was coming back to her. She tried +desperately to rally her forces, to think if this was the man with whom +she wanted to spend her life, her husband for all her days. Alas, she +could not think! Some giant, unknown force had sapped her power of +thought. She weakly took his two hands and tried to push his arm from +around her waist and to raise her head from his shoulder. His arm did +not move; her head sank back again. His lips were on hers—which no man +had ever touched before,—and those lips now were Lawson’s. + +“There was _one_ girl kissed to-night,” announced Mrs. Snow, as she took +off her numerous layers of shawls and worsted head-coverings in +household conclave after her return from the Leverichs’. + +“It was perfectly disgraceful! Is there any hot water on the stove, +Bertha? I want a glassful to drink. I hope you left a piece of stale +bread in the oven for me, I feel a little need of something. Oh, yes, of +course there was a supper, we had lobster Newburg and champagne, but I +didn’t take any; a cup of beef-tea or a little cereal would have suited +me much better. It’s a mercy if I haven’t taken my death of cold. It was +Dosia Linden’s goings-on that I was speaking of; she’s a bold sort of a +piece, evidently, quite different from what I thought. Sh—William’s +gone up-stairs, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Snow dropped her voice mysteriously. +“My dear, she and Lawson Barr sat hidden under an umbrella all the way +home, and never spoke a word. You can’t tell _me_! Never said a word +that anyone could hear. When she came into the dining-room at the +Leverichs’, her face was scarlet, and she couldn’t even look at anyone, +though she talked enough for ten while he played some queer thing on the +piano. You can just ask Ada.” + +Miss Bertha had preserved an immovable countenance throughout the +monologue, but her eye now sought her sister’s and received a swift +glance of confirmation from that silent and discreet damsel. The +confirmation brought a shock to Miss Bertha—fond of the trivial and +unimportant in gossip, the scandal which hurt the young devolved a hurt +on her, too. As mothers who have lost children feel a tenderness for +those who do not belong to them, so Miss Bertha, who had lost her youth, +felt toward the youth in others. Her mother’s small mind yet had an +uncanny power of partial divination, gained from years of experience and +espial, that irritated while it impressed. + +“Her face was probably red from the wind and the rain,” said Miss +Bertha, in a matter-of-fact tone, regardless of her mother’s +contemptuous sniff. “What kind of a time did you have, Ada? Did you see +anything of Mr. Sutton?” + +“Just a little,” replied Ada temperately. + +This time it was the mother’s and Miss Bertha’s eyes that telegraphed. +“Ada, my dear, you may take my shawls up-stairs. She was with him _all_ +the time. I hope he saw enough of Dosia Linden’s bold actions to disgust +him, at any rate. Yes, my dear, everything was managed very beautifully +at the Leverichs’, and it was all very elegant; but she is a little +common—Mrs. Leverich, I mean. She was really quite put out because we +hadn’t driven back faster. There was a Mr. Girard who had come out from +the city, and she wanted Miss Dosia to meet him before he left—he had +just come back from somewhere in the West. She really made quite a time +about it. And there’s a sort of vulgar display about her that I don’t +care for; you can see she’s Lawson’s brother. Oh, well, don’t take me up +so, Bertha; you know what I mean, well enough. You have such a sharp way +with you sometimes, like your dear father’s family. +William—_Wil-liam_!” + +“Yes, mother.” + +“I want you to come down and put the cat out and lock up at once,—oh, +you did, did you?—and kissed me good night, too, you say? I didn’t +notice it. And did you empty the water-pan under the ice-box, and bank +up the fire, and water the big palm? Oh, very well. Then, +William—Wil-liam! I want you to come down again, now, and take a +rhinitis tablet, after the dampness of to-night.” + +There was an emphatic sound from above. + +“He’s shut his door,” said Miss Bertha. + +Ah, what does a girl think who has given up all her bright anticipations +for a man whom she knows is not worthy? Lawson had pressed Dosia’s hand +only when he said good night,—there were others around,—but he had +looked at her lips. She knew how his felt upon them; their touch—more +than all the murmured elusive questions and answers—had made her his. + +She knelt down by the big chair in her room, and buried her hot face in +the cushions, to try and think at last, with a suddenly sinking heart +that feared when it should have rejoiced. He had told her that no one +could make him go, now that she loved him; he would stay here. “And work +for me?” she had asked, and he had answered, “Yes, and work for you.” +She should be so happy now, so happy! The perspective down which she had +always seen her future was suddenly shortened; this was the end. Lawson +Barr, the man she had been playing with at a delightful, enthralling, +forbidden game, he was the man with whom she had promised to spend her +life, her husband for all her days; that which was to have been her +uplifting was instead something for her to carry. Suppose that she had +more of those awful, clear-sighted moments which had disenchanted her +when his sister spoke? No, no; that must not happen, that must not! +Dosia had acquiesced in what was said about him, with the large-eyed +uncomprehension of the girl who pretends that she understands what +everyone expects her to; it meant something—she was afraid to have +anyone tell her what; she pretended to understand, because she was +afraid some one would let her know of half-divined, unmentionable +things. He was not—good; he drank—people despised him: but he clung to +her, and she had let him kiss her, oh, not only once or twice, but many, +many times. She knew in her heart, she knew, that he was what they said; +but it was to be her work to help him always. When she had been with him +hitherto, there had always been the excitement of feeling that the claim +was temporary, to hold or not, at will, a mere pretense of a claim. Now +it was real. She was bound forever! + +Was the moment of disenchantment upon her now? She did not deceive +herself—too late she owned the truth. What was the worst? He was +weak—then she must be strong. She thought of herself in years to come. +People said you couldn’t reform a man who drank—her father had been +very strong on this point. She had thought of it all before, to be sure; +but now—now it came home. She imagined herself keeping his house for +him, getting his meals—perhaps with children; waiting, listening +suspiciously for his returning footsteps; trying to keep him +“straight,”—perhaps not succeeding. Yes, she must succeed! People +looked down on him—so they would look down on her. And while her clear +and pure nature reasserted itself, and thought and tried pathetically to +find out truth alone, her cheeks still burned, her senses owned his +sway. Those intoxicating moments forced themselves upon her, whether she +would or no. But the truth—the truth below that, the truth was that she +did not love him. You can carry any burden if you have the strong wings +of love, but she had them not. What was to have been the crowning of her +maidenhood had come to this—a sacrifice to the baser, and without love. +Nay, not that, not quite that! The maternal spirit in Dosia rose and +yearned over this outcast, whom nobody loved, with a tenderness which +owned no thought of self; she must never think of herself any more, but +only what was best for him. She was to be his wife. The word brought a +choking feeling, with its thrill of mystery. She was so young—so young! +Could she keep up a sacrifice always? Why had she not been able to think +in this way until now? The answer came clearly in her search for truth: +because she would not let herself do so. She had been warned—she had +been warned. + +“Pray—it helps.” That was what she had said to him. Ah, yes! She slid +to her knees; her only real help was in Heaven. She must keep her +promise! She must always love him whom nobody loved, and trust him whom +nobody trusted. Perhaps—perhaps when he kissed her again—She put the +thought away, so that she, a child, might speak straight to God. And +while she prayed Lawson was coming down-stairs with his hat on. + +“You are not going out?” His sister barred the way, in a purple velvet +gown, and laid a plump jeweled hand on his sleeve. The lights were +already out in the drawing-room, and, beyond, the servants were removing +the last traces of the supper. + +He did not answer for a moment, looking at her with hard eyes, void of +expression save for a certain tenseness. It was a look she knew. Then he +answered roughly: + +“I’m going in on the twelve-o’clock train with some of the boys. It’s no +good to talk.” + +“Lawson! not now.” Her tone was angry. “Go up-stairs—to bed.” + +“Well, I guess—not!” said Lawson. He swept her hand from his arm, and +was out of the door and running quickly down the steps before she +turned. + +[Illustration: _It was a look she knew_] + +Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart beating with a +rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. She was his, though she had +been warned. + +Warned—yes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world of chaperons and +parents and guardians and people who knew! + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + + +It was the night of Mrs. Leverich’s grand ball. Dosia was “coming out.” + +The preparations had been going on for the entire week since the drive. +The great house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the floors waxed, +the state silver brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half +a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand orders, to +select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement that was made or thought of +required discussion—what furniture was to be taken up in the attic and +what left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, where +the musicians were to take their stand; how many small tables would be +needed for the serving of the supper that was to come from town. +Leverich himself had said there was to be no expense spared, and he +would see to the wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of +his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there had been a +delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her own name on them, and tried +to realize that this was indeed what Mr. Leverich called “her party.” He +had insisted, at his wife’s suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her +gown for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty thanks for +his kindness. There was something about Mr. Leverich, with all his outer +coarseness, that Dosia liked. When she spoke in a certain way, he never +answered wrong, as his wife sometimes did; he understood. + +Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her lover. After +her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him at the breakfast to +which she came down very late the next morning, she was relieved to hear +that he had suddenly been called away earlier. He might not be back for +a day or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring herself +to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a matter of course by +everyone else. But there had been a note from him, after the two days +were up, postmarked from the city—a mere line that said only, “For the +girl I love.” + +“Will your brother be back for the party?” she asked Mrs. Leverich, +trying to keep her color steady and ask the question casually. + +“Oh, yes, indeed,” the sister answered readily. “He may be back at any +minute now. He’ll be here on the day itself, for certain; he knows I +want his help about some things.” + +Without Lawson’s actual presence Dosia could fashion him into the man +she loved, and pitch her own key of living higher. With that higher +thought and her simple earnestness of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, +more subtly sympathetic with others; she was no girl any longer, she +said to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his eyes +claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the thought. There was a +strange tingling emotion in everything connected with him. Ah, he would +be worthy—he must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence +supplied him with the halo. + +All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the Leverich house; +it was impossible to overestimate its importance. Every woman was having +a new dress made, or was absorbingly renovating an old one, and every +man was sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody was +asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball was to be outside +the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,—she had taken cold on the +ride,—but it was to be one of Miss Bertha’s rare appearances in public; +she was to chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former was to +be one of the receiving party. + +Dosia’s week had been one surging thought of Lawson, mixed with wild +anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time on the eventful night +he had not arrived. + +“Girard is coming, you know, after all,” said Leverich, as they +assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. “I met him in town +to-day, and was lucky enough to get him. That’s the right man for you, +Dosia.” + +“For me!” Dosia laughed, with her rising color. “Mr. Leverich, you are +always trying to find the right man for me. I don’t want him!” + +“You haven’t met him yet,” said Leverich wisely. “He’s the only fellow I +know that I’d be willing to have you marry. I told him you were waiting +for him.” + +“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Dosia, in consternation. + +“Now, don’t get excited,” said Leverich, smiling broadly. “I said he’d +have to work to get you—that you weren’t the kind of a girl that came +when she was beckoned to. Oh, I put your stock ’way up.” + +He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. “No, I’ll +confess! I didn’t say anything of the kind; I was just romancing. I did +tell him he’d meet a pretty nice girl—you don’t mind that, do you?” + +“You don’t deserve to be answered,” said Dosia. She went and hung over +his chair caressingly for a moment before escaping from the room. + +In spite of his recantation, the effect of having been offered to Mr. +Girard remained the real situation—one of sudden and great intimacy. +The thought of his coming to-night added to her happiness; it brought +the deep pleasure inseparable from his name—it was as if something both +calm and protecting had been added, like the comfortable presence of one +who understood. He would sympathize, if he knew, with that high motive +of duty which must uphold her, whether the glamour held or failed. He +would know what it was to feel that you must be true. + +As she went through the still unlighted upper hall, she came face to +face with some one in an overcoat, a man who carried a valise. + +“Lawson!” she whispered. + +For one dreadful moment she saw him in that way she feared; shallow, +insincere, unstable—was that all? Was there something indefinably odd, +indefinably strange? Then she saw only the gaze that recalled +everything—he loved her! That thrilling thought carried all before it; +her pulses leaped to own him master, with a sudden lovely, trusting joy. + +“No, no!” she whispered again, with falling eyelids, as he made a +movement toward her. His lips touched her hair. “Not here! Some one is +coming.” + +“Later, then!” he murmured assentingly, with a gleaming eye, as she +eluded him and ran down the corridor to her own room. + +This was to be her ball, her ball! Her lover had come. Her dress lay on +the bed, a white and airy thing; her white pearl-beaded slippers were +below it on the floor. Every chair was piled high with dainty whiteness +of some sort. Her dressing-table, with its candles and flowers, was like +a shrine for her beauty. The mirror reflected her with loosened waves of +hair and bare arms and feet, her bath-robe slipping from her shoulders. +It reflected her again, fresh and gleaming, low-bodiced, short-skirted, +and a-tiptoe in her pearly slippers; and again in filmy, trailing +petticoats, and half-covered neck, sitting like a pictured marchioness +of old in front of the dressing-table, in the shine of the candles, +while Mrs. Leverich’s maid piled the fair hair high on her small head. +And every few minutes there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought +in a box of flowers, great, delicious bunches of red and pink and white +roses, and sweet peas and lilies, and violets tied with yards of +lustrous satin ribbon. Dosia held out her arms for them, the dear, +fragrant, heavenly things, and hung over them, and buried her face in +them, and kissed them, before she sent them down-stairs, with loving +protest that she should have to be parted from them until she should +follow. She had not so much as dreamed of this richness of flowers for +her! It was because it was her ball, her ball! And her lover had come. + +There was a noise of carriages driving up to the house—the intimate +friends who came first. The musicians below were beginning to tune their +instruments, and the twanging of the strings touched an intenser chord +of exhilaration. The long-ago dance at the bazaar—was Dosia to have +another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? For this was +her ball—her ball, and the dance would be with Lawson as her lover. Her +feet kept time to some fairy measure of her own. + +[Illustration: _Like a pictured marchioness of old_] + +Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white cloud +enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in pale green satin, came +into the room and clasped a little thread of pearls around the slender +white throat before she went down-stairs. + +Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but pale and cold; +there was a sick look around her mouth. One or two girls ran in for a +peep at the débutante. And was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent +up word that they were all waiting for her. In a moment—Dosia would +come in a moment. If they would leave her, she would be down in a +moment. The music had struck up now, and swung into the preparatory +strains of Lohengrin. Dosia would come in a moment. + +As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone in her +chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. Her spirit cried out +that this instant could never come again; she wished to feel it, to know +it, forever. The mirrors reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, +as she leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... Then she +opened the door and went down the hall to the stairs. + +Dosia’s beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends on the soul +within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. Never in her life +would she look again as she did to-night, with that lovely, childlike +joy of anticipation; deeper happiness might be hers, but never happiness +of the same kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one +shaded his eyes with his hand. + +The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which led to a broad +landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway of the brilliantly +lighted drawing-room across the hall. In there were grouped Mrs. +Leverich, Lois, the rest of the receiving party, and the Misses Snow, +standing near a table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, +their long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich was +at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside him was George +Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; at one side in the +half-shadow of some palms was another man. Something in the turn of the +shoulders was oddly familiar to Dosia—he moved suddenly, and for a +second she stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was +Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her than it was +followed by another: Where was Lawson? + +“Here is our princess descending the stairs,” announced Mr. Sutton +gallantly. + +At that instant, as Dosia stood on the landing, with one slippered foot +on the lower step, facing her little admiring world, somebody began to +come down the flight at the side with hurrying, stumbling feet. It was +Lawson in evening dress, his olive cheeks flushed, his eyes reckless. +The men who were watching knew at once that, in common parlance, he was +“not himself.” Dosia, her sweet eyes raised to meet his, only knew, with +a quick, half-frightened thrill, that he looked strangely unnatural. He +seemed to see no one but her, as he caught up to her, saying jovially: + +“You can give me that other kiss now.” + +[Illustration: _Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling +feet_] + +Did his hand but touch her white shoulder in that suggestion of vulgar +familiarity that branded her as with a hot iron in its scorching, +blinding shame? She could not blush, the blood had all gone to her +stricken heart and left her white as a snow wreath. Then Leverich sprang +up the steps and took Lawson by the arm, dragging him forcibly back into +the upper regions, as some of the guests began to descend. Dosia must go +in, helpless, toward those staring faces. Would no one come to her aid? +Justin? He had turned to speak to Lois. Billy Snow? His face was +averted, his eyes on the ground. Bailey Girard, her helper once, the +hero of her dreams, the man his friend had pledged for succor—Bailey +Girard stood motionless. + +It was George Sutton who came forward and, placing her hand in his arm, +led her with old-fashioned courtesy to her place beside Mrs. Leverich. +The whole incident had taken barely a moment. Dosia stood up, pale and +graceful, artificially self-composed, greeting the many people who began +to pour in, smiling above the enormous bouquet of bride roses that she +held, and chatting in a high, thin voice. Her one immediate thought was +that she must stand up straight, as if nothing had happened—stand up +straight and talk. + +“Has the girl no feeling?” thought Lois contemptuously. “Why, she did +not even blush!” + +Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling of death in the +heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! What did those men think of +her, or those women who saw? What could they think her like, to have +given any man a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson +done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulder—he had asked her for +a kiss. That was all. It was nothing and it was everything—something +that could never be undone. Through the dancing, through the flirting, +through all the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. +What had happened? It was nothing—and it was everything. Each effort +for comfort brought with it that horrible, blinding shame to surge over +her more and more, as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch. + +How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly showed the people, +how gay the scene! One partner after another claimed Dosia. She danced +and danced, and did not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all +that throng there was not one person whom she could call her friend. She +fancied that people were whispering as she passed them. She had but one +prayer—that the evening might end. She met Justin’s eyes from time to +time; they looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered +expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, and she was right. +Those who are responsible are squeamish as to the appearance of delicacy +in the conduct of a young girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, +yet there was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such a +thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed them all in an +awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich briefly, “She had better +come back to us at once,” and Leverich had answered, “Well, perhaps it +would be best.” + +William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming into the ball-room +at all. He stood, instead, leaning against a doorway, and watched +everyone who approached Dosia; his brows were lowering, his attitude +aggressive. He saw that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was +not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, bent +solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glass of water, and +William saw that she had lapsed momentarily on a corner divan by his +sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful eyes raised to the elder woman, +but he did not hear the younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice: + +“Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so glad to be here with you!” + +“Thank you, my dear.” + +“I’m homesick,” said Dosia, with a white smile. “Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so +homesick!” Her fancy had leaped passionately to the security of the +untidy cottage in the South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it +were really the loving home she longed for. + +“Homesick at a ball!” said Miss Bertha, with a kind inflection. She +patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly with her thin +ungloved hand. “You oughtn’t to be homesick now, you must enjoy +yourself, my dear; you’re young.” + +Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosia’s burning eyes. +If she could only have stayed with Miss Bertha! But she was claimed for +the dance. Why must you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never +end? + +The evening was half over when she found herself in front of Mr. Girard, +with some one hastily introducing them. He had just come from up-stairs +with several men, all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he +hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively fancied that +he had kept out of her way on purpose, though she remembered hearing +Leverich say that he did not know how to dance, and so did not care for +balls. Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, his +personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, as something +unaffectedly charming and magnetic. He was tall, straight, and well +made, with the square shoulders she remembered, and the easy, erect +carriage of a soldier. The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his +long, thin face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, all +gave an impression of young vitality and power that accorded well with +her thought of him. His eyes were light gray, and not very large; Dosia +had seen them full of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to +acquire a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had thought +of him so long and intimately that his presence near her brought its +exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. She looked up at him. It might +help even her to be near anyone as strong as that, if he were kind—as +kind as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, +unconsciously, as she half extended her hand. + +Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed formally as he said: +“Pardon me, but I am just on my way to the train.” + +He stepped aside, leaving a free passage for the youth who came pushing +by to claim his dance with her, and was gone almost before she knew it. +He _could_ have stayed—he did not want to talk to her! She was lonely +and disgraced, and the thought of Lawson an agony. + +She did not see that, as Girard went into the hall, some one gripped him +there and said fiercely, “Come with me!” Billy Snow, his eyes blazing, +had pulled him out on the piazza beyond. + +“You’ve got to answer to me for that,” he stuttered. “You’ve got to +answer to me for that, Mr. Girard. Why did you turn away from Do—from +Miss Linden like that?” + +“What right have you to ask?” questioned the other man coolly, but with +a sudden frown. + +“None, except that I—love her,” said Billy, with a queer, boyish catch +in his voice. “Yes, I love her, and she doesn’t care a snap of her +finger for me. But I don’t care; I love her anyway, and I always shall. +I’m proud to!” The catch came again. “She may step on me, if she wants +to. You saw what happened here to-night when that damned brute—” He +made a gesture toward the hallway. + +Girard made no answer, but looked into vacancy for a moment. Before the +sight of both of them came a vision of Dosia in all the radiance of her +beautiful innocence, the flush on her cheek, and the divine, shy look in +her eyes when she first raised them to Lawson, before it changed to—— + +“You saw what happened here to-night,” said Billy, with renewed heat at +the other’s silence. “I don’t care what _he_ said, or what you think; +she’s no more to blame than——” + +The other stopped him with a quick, peremptory gesture. + +“You mistake,” he said shortly. “You’re speaking to the wrong person. I +saw nothing. I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t want to.” + +“What!” cried William, staring. + +“Let me give you a piece of advice,” said Girard incisively, with an odd +whiteness in his face. “Don’t you know better than to bring the name of +a woman into a discussion like this? If a girl needs no defense—by +Heaven, she needs none! And that’s the end of it. Only a fool talks.” + +“Yes,” said William, with a sharp breath, after a pause,—“yes; thank +you—I’ll remember. But when I meet _him_—” He stopped significantly. + +“Oh, whatever you please!” said Girard, spreading out his hands lightly, +with a smile and a quick, steely gleam in his eyes that cut like a +scimitar. + +“Sorry I’ve got to go—my overcoat is just inside. No, I don’t want to +drive, I’d rather walk. Good-by!” + +He went off in a moment, with long strides, down the carriage-drive to +the station, the dance-music growing fainter in the distance. She was +dancing still. Her face—her pure, sweet, pleading child’s face—went +with him through the moonlight. He knew that look! When helpless things +were hurt like that—He couldn’t talk to her that night, nor touch her +hand, because of that burning desire to leap on Lawson Barr and choke +the life out of him first. + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + + +The morrow after the ball was drawing to a close in darkening clouds and +an eerie, rushing wind. It had been one of the gray, cold days of +spring, with a leaden sky and a pervading damp and chill—a long, long +day to some of those in the Leverich house. Rumor whispered that Lawson +had been found upon the highroad in the early morning, unconscious, with +his face and head cut, and that there were tracks yet on the side piazza +from the feet of those who had carried him in from the muddy roads. +Rumor said that the wounds had not come from accident. The doctor’s +carriage had been there, and had gone again; but the doctor might have +come to see Miss Linden, who was also said to be prostrated and in bed, +or Mrs. Leverich, who was excused to callers as having a headache. The +great house was silent and deserted-looking inside, except for the +servants engaged in setting it to rights and carrying the furniture down +from the attic, where it had been stored overnight. + +Only a few even of the inmates—of whom Dosia was one—knew that Lawson +was in an upper room, with his head bandaged, sobered and sullen, +watching through the wide windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as +he waited the completion of the arrangements that were to take him at +nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had put his foot +down this time; Lawson was to go. He was bringing his vices too near +home, concealment was no longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past +rose to make a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected +Dosia’s. + +“It’s no use,” Leverich had said to his wife, in a stormy interview that +morning, “I won’t have the fellow here another day. I’ll ship him off to +Nevada, and not another penny will I give him while he lives. He can +sink or swim, for all me; and he _will_ sink—down to hell.” + +“Oh, don’t say that you won’t send the poor boy any money,” pleaded his +wife. + +“Not a red. I’ve had enough of him, Myra. _You_ know! As long as he +could appear half-way decent, I was willing to carry my end, but he’s +going to the dogs now too fast for me. I’ve done with him; he goes +to-night, whether he’s able to or not.” + +Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. Mrs. Leverich, +impelled by what sometimes seems to be the very demon of hospitality, +still pressed her to stay longer, while knowing that her absence would +be a relief. + +“It is too bad that you want to go like this,” she had said crossly, +sitting in gorgeous negligée by the side of Dosia’s bed, her handsome, +richly colored face showing mean lines in it. “I looked upon you quite +as a daughter; I thought we would have such nice times together. Why on +earth couldn’t you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? Then none of this +would have happened.” Her tone was complaining, as of one compelled to +suffer unnecessarily; there was such a total absence of warmth as to +prove that shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated +unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her an injured feeling; +if there had been a glamour around Dosia the glamour had departed. What +little depth the nature of Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of +blood, which made her resent any imputation on Lawson. + +“I suppose you’d like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have your meals in +your room,” she went on in a businesslike way. “I’ll send Martha up to +pack your trunk for you—that is, if you insist on going—if she’s not +too busy. The servants have so much to do to-day.” + +“Oh, I can pack it myself,” said Dosia. What did one stab the more +matter now? She took Mrs. Leverich’s hand impulsively. “You’ve been so +good, so kind to me—you’ve given me so many pretty things,”—her voice +sank to a whisper,—“it doesn’t seem to me that I ought to keep them +now. I want to give them back to you.” + +“What is it you say?” asked Mrs. Leverich impatiently. “You speak so +low, I can hardly hear you. Oh, these!” She turned to a little pile of +jewel-cases on the table. “Why, I gave them to you to keep. Well, if you +feel that way about it—These pearls, perhaps, but the pins were quite +inexpensive; do keep them, really, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, +you know.” + +“I’d rather not,” said Dosia; and her hostess gathered the things when +she went out. + +It was a long day—a long, long day. From the bed where Dosia lay, she +saw the gray clouds shifting, shifting endlessly above through the +opening made by the parted window-curtains. What had happened? +Nothing—and everything; nothing—and everything! + +Gossip reigned in the village, carrying Dosia and Lawson up and down its +gamut, even reaching the high crescendo of a secret marriage, with the +inevitably hinted smirching reasons therefor. The Leverich ball promised +to supply subject-matter for many a day to come. Mrs. Snow, from as +early as eleven o’clock in the morning, sat with a white worsted shawl +wrapped around her—the sign of elegant leisure—and rocked in the +green-bowered and steaming little sitting-room between the geraniums and +the begonias while awaiting visitors. She greeted each one who “ran in” +with the invariable remark: + +“I suppose you know all about the Leverichs’ ball last night. Well, what +do you think of the goings-on there?” being intent mousingly on getting +every last little cheesy crumb of detail, and peacefully unaware of +deep, rich stores concealed in her own family. The incident of the +stairway was common property, but Miss Bertha had told nothing of +Dosia’s little heart-breaking confidence to her. Her mother was amazed +at the very conservative disapproval expressed by this elder daughter, +turning for confirmation of her own views to her callers. + +“I thought, before all this, that the girl was a bold thing,” she +announced in virtuous condemnation. “It’s all very well for you to try +and defend her, Bertha, but neither you nor Ada would have gone on in +that way.—Oh, yes, Mrs. Willetts, my dear, he kissed her on the +stairs—just as they all say. But that was the least part of it. They +say his _manner_ to her—And he was—yes, exactly. Oh, a man doesn’t +take liberties, in _such_ a way, unless a girl has allowed a good deal. +It’s evident that they’ve—been—pret-ty—intimate. I’m sorry for the +Alexanders, they’ll have a handful in her. Bertha, will you knock on the +window? The man with the eggs is passing by, and we want three. +_Bertha!_ you are not paying any attention to me. She is not herself at +all to-day, Mrs. Willetts, she looks so yellow. Yes, you do, Bertha. +Don’t you think she’s very yellow, Mrs. Willetts?” + +“Perhaps it is the light,” suggested Mrs. Willetts evasively. + +“No, it’s not the light; it’s the late hours,” said Mrs. Snow. “I did +not want her to go to the ball, late hours knock her up for days. +William shows the effect of it, too—his right hand is all swelled up. +He says he doesn’t know how it got so, but I think it’s from dancing too +much.” + +“Mother!” expostulated Miss Bertha. + +“Well, my dear, I don’t see why you speak to me like that. I’m not in my +second childhood yet! I don’t know why he couldn’t get a swelled hand +from dancing; some of these young girls are so athletic, they grip your +fingers like a vise—I know _I_ find it very unpleasant. Don’t you +remember—no, of course you don’t, but I do—how poor General Grant’s +hand was puffed out to twice its size from people shaking it? The +picture of it was in all the papers at the time.” + +“I don’t think William danced much,” said Ada. + +Mrs. Snow pursed her pale lips and shook her small, neat head. + +“All I know is that he was quite worn out; he slept so heavily that he +never heard me at all when I rattled at his door-knob and called to him +at three o’clock this morning that I thought I heard some one on the +porch below his window. It’s very odd—I’ve heard it before. I don’t +think it’s cats, and I’m so afraid of tramps.” + +The statuesque Ada looked up with a swiftly startled expression. + +“There are always tramps around,” said Mrs. Willetts. + +“Yes, I know it, and it worries me to have William out so late alone. +William is nothing but a child, though he is so tall,” said Mrs. Snow. +“Of course, last night his sisters were with him.” She paused before +harking back to the appetizing theme. “They say Miss Linden is still +staying at the Leverichs’. I shouldn’t think she’d stay there an hour +longer than she could help. They say Mrs. Alexander refused to have her +back again at first—did you hear that? They say——” + +And in Dosia’s room, where she lay alone, the long, silent day wore on; +the gray clouds shifted, shifted above. What had happened? Nothing—and +everything. + +If Leverich was to keep his word about Lawson, the preparations for his +departure must be speedy. They also took money. Leverich could contract +for any amount of expenditure to be paid in the future by large drafts, +but to hand over five hundred on the minute in cash was at certain times +and hours an irritatingly difficult procedure. He cursed the necessity +now, with a fervor born of the disastrous ball, and the late hours, and +the further fact that stocks had gone down suddenly and he was out on a +deal. The gray clouds meant also, in the city, clouds of dust, which the +raw wind swept smartingly into his eyes every time he had occasion to go +out. As he was getting ready at last to go home with the purchased +tickets, he looked up and saw Justin coming in. Leverich nodded to the +other’s greeting, but did not otherwise return it. + +“I won’t ask you to sit down,” he said curtly; “I want to catch the +four-o’clock train out. How are you getting on? All right?” + +“All wrong.” + +“What’s the matter?” + +“This,” said Justin, with a white light in his eyes, and holding out a +letter which the other took half reluctantly, relapsing mechanically +into the chair by his desk, while Justin dropped straddle-legged into +another opposite, his face looking over the back of it, around which his +arms were clasped. He went on talking, while the other slowly unfolded +the paper and looked at the heading. + +“You remember those first big consignments we sent out after the fire? +Well, the whole output was rotten!” + +“Great heavens!” said the other, sitting up straight, with his eyes +stuck to the lines. “Are you sure it’s as this says?” + +“Sure? It’s the sixth letter of the kind we’ve had in ten days; three +came in this morning’s mail. The packing-room is full now of returned +machines—what we’ll do with the rest I don’t know. A couple of firms +want the instruments duplicated; the rest want their money back. We +talked big at first, thought it was a mistake—that’s why I didn’t speak +of it to you—but it’s no mistake; the whole output’s rotten. The bars +are rusted and bent, so that everything’s out of gear; it would cost +more to repair the machines than to make new ones.” + +“Were the bars those you got from Cater?” asked Leverich. + +“Yes.” + +Leverich whistled. + +“It’s no fault of his, those he used were all right.” + +Bullen says they must have been a fraction off size for us, and that did +the business. Heaven only knows how many more letters we’ll get! I don’t +see how we’re to pay up and get out of it, as it is.” + +“Yes,” said Leverich, throwing the letter down on the desk, drumming on +it with the ends of his fingers. Then he shrugged his big shoulders as +if shunting the burden from them as he rose. “Well, I must go. Sorry I +can’t help you out, but Martin’s away now. By the way, when you can pay +up on that interest, we’ll be glad to have it. We’ve been going pretty +easy with you, you know, but it can’t last forever; we’ve got to have +our money, as well as other people.” He had not meant to say anything of +the kind, but the bad news and the inferred appeal had accented the +irritation of the day. + +“Oh, certainly,” said Justin, with a swift gleam in his blue eyes, and a +pride that could be large enough to make contemptuous allowance for a +little meanness in the man from whom he had received benefits. He had +counted on Leverich’s ready help in this trouble, but there was more +between the two men than the money—from the first moment of meeting +this afternoon, Dosia’s name, unspoken, had correlated in each a little +hidden spring of antagonism. One of Justin’s womenkind had misused +Leverich’s hospitality; both resented the fact and her enforced +departure. How many business situations have been made or marred by +domestic happenings, no history of finance will ever tell. + +And still the long day wore on in Dosia’s silent room. + +The preparations for Lawson’s going were all made before the nightfall +that was to cover his exit. His trunk had gone; his coat and hat and +hand-luggage were stacked conveniently together on a chair in the empty, +cleared-out room. + +“And this is the last money you’ll ever get from me,” Leverich said, +counting out the bills on the table by which Lawson sat uneasily, his +head and part of his swollen, discolored face bandaged, his dark eyes +glancing furtively from under their heavy lids. “There are your tickets, +they’ll carry you through. Peters will be at the door with the carriage +at nine to take you to the train here, and James will go over with you +to the terminal and put you on the sleeper. You can’t get out too fast +for me.” + +“It’s kind of you to kick a fellow when he’s down,” said Lawson +sardonically. + +“It’s a pretty expensive kick,” returned Leverich grimly, “but it’s the +last. You’ll never get a cent more from me, nor from Myra either, if I +know it.” + +“Oh, very well,” said Lawson indifferently. But when his sister came in +afterwards alone, he cut her words short; through all her plaintive +farewell complainings there was a manifestly cheerful prevision of +relief when he should be gone. + +“I’ve had enough of this—don’t come in here again. He says you’re to +send me no money, but you’re to send me all I want—you hear?” + +“Oh, Lawson!” + +“You know why you’d better.” He fixed his eye on her threateningly, and +the full color blanched suddenly from her face. + +“Yes, yes, I will.” She made an effort to recover herself. “If you +realized how used up I am over all this——” + +“Don’t come in here again!” His rising voice, the glance he shot at her, +sent her flying from the room—it was as if some crouching animal were +about to leap a barrier between them. + +The shifting gray clouds were darkening now into a solid mass, the eerie +wind that had sprung up whined fitfully around the corners of the house, +as he sat there waiting. After a while the door opened and shut; there +was a soft, rustling noise. Lawson looked up, and saw Dosia against that +background of the darkening sky. She was in a white silken gown, given +her by Mrs. Leverich, that fell in straight folds from her waist to her +feet. She had been in white the night of the ball. But her face! He put +his hand involuntarily across his eyes. So pinched, so wan, so small, so +piteously changed that face, he did well to hide the sight of it from +him. Only her eyes—those eyes that were the mirrors of Dosia’s +soul—showed that she still lived; in them was a steadfastness and a +purpose won from death. + +She came straight toward him, though with a slow and languid step, +dragging a low chair forward to a place by his. His rough appearance, so +different from his usual carelessly well-cared-for aspect, sent a +momentary spasm over her pinched face, but that was all. She dropped +into the chair as one who found it difficult to stand, saying after a +moment’s silence, in a childlike voice: + +“Please take your hand down from your eyes; please don’t mind looking at +me.” + +He dropped the hand heavily on the table, with some inarticulate +protest. + +“Please don’t mind looking at me. I want to say—I came here to say—it +is all wrong to act as if everything were all your fault, as if you were +all to blame. I’ve been thinking, thinking, thinking, all day long. If I +had done what was right, none of this would have happened. It was my +fault too.” + +“No!” said Lawson roughly. + +“Yes.” She stopped, and repeated solemnly: “It was my fault too. They +are sending you away now because—because you had been making love to +me. But I let you”—her locked fingers twisted and untwisted as she +talked—“I _wanted_ you to, when I knew it was wrong, when I didn’t +really love you. That was why you couldn’t respect me. If I had been +quite high and good, you would not have—none of this would have +happened.” + +“Oh!” said Lawson; the old bitter, mocking smile flickered back to his +lips. “Really, don’t you think you’re setting too much value even on +_your_ influence? I assure you, you can have quite a clear conscience in +that regard.” + +She went on, with no attention to what he had been saying beyond the +fact that her pale cheek seemed to whiten and her gaze was fixed the +more solemnly on his. + +“I couldn’t be satisfied until I had thought out the truth. There is +nothing that satisfies but the truth.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “If +it cuts your heart in two, you’ve got to bear it—and be glad—because +it’s the truth. I know now that, after all, I didn’t help you; I +_hindered_. That’s all the more reason for me to stand by you now. And I +came to say,”—she took his hand and laid her cold cheek upon it,—“if +you go away—take me with you! I have enough money to go too. If you +have to work, I’ll work; if you are hungry, I’ll be hungry. There is no +one to love you but me, and I _will_. I said I would believe in you, and +I will believe in you—as I promised—always.” + +“My God!” said Lawson. He tore his hand from her, and flung his head +upon his folded arms on the table, breaking into great, voiceless sobs +that shook him from head to foot. Half-inarticulate words fell from him: +“Don’t touch me—don’t come near me!” At last he turned, and, gathering +up a fold of her gown, kissed it again and again. His passion raised a +faint stir of the old thrill that came from she knew not where, except +that his presence inevitably called it forth. + +“For this once you may believe in me,” he said. “Look at me!” His gaze, +burning with an inner scorn, rested on hers. “You are the dearest, the +loveliest—” His voice broke once more, he had to wait before he could +regain it. “If I were to let you sink your life with mine, I’d deserve +to be hung. I’ve let you talk as if you could help me. Well, you can’t, +and I’ll tell you why—I’ll clear your conscience of me forever. Down at +the bottom of it all, I don’t want to be helped. I don’t want to be made +better. I don’t want to live a different life! There are moments when +I’ve deceived myself as well as you, but it was all rot. It’s not that +I’m not fit for you,—no man’s that!—but I’m made so that I’d rather go +to the devil than _be_ fit for you. The more you cared for me, the more +I’d drag you down. That’s the whole brutal truth. The one saving grace I +own is that I tell it to you now.” + +“Ah, no, no!” said Dosia, with a cry. “It can’t be so.” She turned her +head from side to side, as one looking for succor; her composure was +failing her, after so many cruel knife-thrusts in her already bleeding +heart—she yearned over him with a compassion and longing too great to +bear. + +“Dosia,” said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice sounded far away in +her ears. + +“Yes,” she answered, rising also, she knew not why. + +“This is good-by.” + +She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed to lose the marks +of dissipation and bitterness, and become strangely boyish, strangely +sweet, in its expression. + +“See!” he said, “I could clasp my arms around you, as I’m longing to, +and kiss your darling mouth. You’d let me, wouldn’t you, blessed one? +For all that I’ve done or all that I’ve been, you’d let me?” + +“Yes,” whispered Dosia, trembling. + +“Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, that I did +not—that I was man enough to keep you free of me at the last. I’ll +never touch you again—no, not so much as the hem of your gown. And, so +help me God, I’ll never look upon your face again.” + +“Lawson, Lawson!” + +“I’ll never see your face again. When you think of me, believe and pray +that I’ll keep my word. I want to have the thought of you to die with.” + +“I can’t bear it!” wailed Dosia suddenly. + +“Good-by.” + +She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, and his +gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking at each other; the room +faded away from before them in those moments that were of eternity. The +past—the present—the future crept up now and stood between them, +pushing them farther and farther away from each other, farther and +farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and +grown dim. They were neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, +and beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting. + +Through the high window the darkening sky had become suddenly luminous +where it touched the horizon. + +Slowly she moved away from him—slowly, slowly. One last lingering, +solemn look, and the door had closed. + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + + +“Lois, would you mind very much if we didn’t move into the new house, +after all?” + +“Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be +finished next week.” + +“It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this +year,” said Justin. + +Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the purple +wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after Dosia’s +return. At the side of the steps a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the +place fragrant; the air was full of a sort of glitter that touched the +leaves whenever they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made +the grass brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the voices of the +children sounded peacefully over their early supper. + +The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no +foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George +Sutton, and the people who might “drop in,” as they often did on +Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, +had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while waiting +for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but now that he was +here she put down her book with a show of reluctance as she said: + +“Why didn’t you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades +yesterday when I was in town—that was what I wanted to talk to you +about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks +beforehand at this season of the year.” + +“You can countermand it, can’t you?” + +“I suppose I’ll have to—if we’re not to move into the house,” said Lois +in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as usual, to +her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled. “I thought +you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the money _all_ +have to ‘go back into the business,’” she quoted sardonically, “as +usual? I think there might be some left for your own family sometimes. +I’m tired of always going without for the business.” It was a complaint +she had made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment +she felt as if she were saying it for the first time. + +“We have orders, I’m glad to say, but we’ve had one big setback lately,” +he answered. + +He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side—the very +effort for success was meat and drink to him, he cared not what else he +went without, so the business grew; but she _might_ have had a little +more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the grand +climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife +sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right. + +“I’ve been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven’t talked +about it,” he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The +blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope +with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it—the +whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not +diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see +his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the unreasoning +sympathy of love. + +“I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I +shouldn’t have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple of +houses for next year that you’ll like much better, he says.” + +“Oh, it will be just the same next year; there’ll always be something,” +said Lois indifferently, getting up to go into the house. “I hate the +whole thing!” + +He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have +counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that he +could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If his +own wife could be like that, she might be. + +“Papa dear, I love you so much!” + +He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and +blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes, +her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent +over. + +“Zaidee, my little Zaidee,” he said, and, lifting her on his knee, +strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection +that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart +perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, +and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure—his little +darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his child, +he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it was, +could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the heart-hunger of +his wife. + +She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the +house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the +atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and +unsmiling, accepting Justin’s occasional caresses as if they made little +difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, +passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; it +contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still +occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and +everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall must +be adjusted to her ear—that ear that had strained and ached for his +coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in which +he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him until he +kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at being so +glad to go. + +The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had +feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all +his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had borrowed +a large sum from Lewiston’s,—a young private banking firm, glad at the +moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of months,—holding +on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new demand for the +machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater’s, with whom there was +still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed +at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich’s dictum regarding +Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, +outlying competitors: “You’ll have to force that fellow out of business +or get him to come into the combine.” + +Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price +demanded for the continuance of a backing; there was just a little of +the high-handed quality in his manner which says, “No more nonsense, if +you please.” That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs that +were ready, if he showed symptoms of “falling down,” to shake him +ratlike by the neck and cast him out. + +“Papa dear, papa dear! There’s a man coming up the walk, my papa dear.” + +“Why, so there is,” said Justin, rising and setting the child down +gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois +simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. “Why, how are you, +Larue? I’m mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?” + +“The steamer got in day before yesterday,” said the newcomer, shaking +hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark, pointed +beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice +that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered over Lois. +“How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? Which chair shall I push +out of the sun for you—this one?” + +“Yes, thank you,” responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of +lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green +vines. “Aren’t you going to sit down yourself?” + +“Thank you, I’ve only a minute,” said the visitor, leaning against one +of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. “I’m out at my place at +Collingswood for the summer, and the trains don’t connect very well on +Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I +wouldn’t pass you by.” + +“Did you have a pleasant trip?” asked Lois. + +“Very pleasant,” rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. “Oh, by the +way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office +last week. Anything I can do for you?” + +“Have you any money lying around just now that you don’t know what to do +with?” asked Justin significantly. + +Mr. Larue’s dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the +mention of money brings into social relations. + +“Perhaps,” he admitted. + +“May I come around to-morrow at three o’clock and talk to you?” + +“Yes, do,” said the other, preparing to move on. “Please don’t get up, +Mrs. Alexander; you don’t look as well as I’d like to see you.” + +“Oh, I’m all right,” said Lois. + +“You must try and get strong this summer,” said Mr. Larue, his eyes +dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he +turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee +dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue turned +once more and lifted his hat to her. + +A faint, lovely color had come into Lois’ cheek, brought there by the +powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larue’s presence; she +felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had hardly +talked alone for a couple of hours altogether in their whole five years’ +acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest +occasion, as he had to-day; he knew when she entered a room or left it, +and she knew that he knew. + +It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which +exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of +either. He knew as soon as his eyes fell on her whether she were glad or +sorry, lonely or confident, and his glance or the tone of his voice was +a response to her mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or +too cold, or needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such +intuitions; he had to be told clumsily, and even then might not +understand. Yet she had not loved him the less because she must beat +down such little barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more +for it—he was the man to whom she belonged heart and soul—but the +barriers were a fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do +nothing that Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she +misunderstood her involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he +reverenced her as his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He +would have given all he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin +took as a matter of course. + +Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than half +of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived abroad for +the further study of music, an art to which she was passionately +devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of scandal into +the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away; there was +nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden, under the +undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant publicity +of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She sometimes played the +accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went over every spring, +presumably to be with her, living alone for the greater part of the year +at his large place at Collingswood. Neither was ever known to speak of +the other without the greatest respect, and questions as to when either +had been “heard from” were usual and in order; it was always tacitly +taken for granted that Mrs. Larue’s expatriation was but temporary. + +But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had +suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the +tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to +that sting of the known comment of other men: “It must be pretty tough +to have your wife go back on you like that.” In some mysterious way his +wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished on +her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married him, +it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had proudly let +her go. + +Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch +steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said: + +“There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia’s hurrying down the road. I +think I’d better take the chairs in now.” + + + + +CHAPTER SIXTEEN + + +Dosia had come back from the Leverichs’ to a household in which her +presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. +She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, and spent her +evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for +sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough—sleep, where all +one’s sensibilities were dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She +had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before, +owing to their mother’s preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a +drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich +domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest. +Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of +all—as if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting +for the next thing to happen. + +Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held +back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She +couldn’t understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get +into an equivocal position with such a man—“really not a gentleman,” as +she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that +you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was +condemning. + +The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously +questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich +bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor +was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was +absorbed. + +Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory +counting on the sympathy that had helped her before, but she had been +unfortunate in the times for her visits; on the first occasion Mrs. +Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the +second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird +pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable +house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to +put out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing +when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every +minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, “People +ought to know when to come and when not to.” Dosia got no farther than +the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her +a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she +was not asked to sit down. + +Your trouble wasn’t anybody else’s trouble, no matter how kind people +were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her devoted +cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and giving her a +curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. It +would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could have hurt her very +much. But Dosia was in the half-numb condition which may result from +some great blow or the fall from a great height, save for those moments +when she was anguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest +dagger-thrusts, at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, as when +one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful dead which one must, +for all time, be terribly powerless to alleviate. + +Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her +great bunches of roses that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly akin +when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every week, +though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was +changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest and +solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other claims Mr. +Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of profit for +himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He required little +entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected faculty for +narrative conversation. + +Foolish and inane in amatory “attentions” to young ladies, George was no +fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of current +facts, and could talk about the newsboys’ clubs, or the condition of the +docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical reasons +why motives for reform didn’t reform; and the talk was usually +semi-interesting, and sometimes more—he had the personal intimacy with +his topics which gives them life. Dosia began to find him, if not +exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed. She began genuinely to +like him; he took her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always +thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments when +his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration or a warmer feeling, +but was, instead, somewhat gratefully touched by it. Not only her +starved vanity but her starved self-respect cried out for food, and he +alone gave it to her. + +This Sunday afternoon Dosia—modish and natty in her short walking-skirt +and little jacket of shepherd’s check, and a clumpy, black-velveted, +pink-rosed straw hat—walked companionably beside the square-set figure +of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had +preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a strong breeze, +although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside trees and grasses +had inspired him with the recollection of a country boy’s calendar—a +pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his +theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or to hold her +little checked umbrella so that the sun should not shine in her eyes, or +to offer her his hand with old-fashioned gallantry if there was any hint +of an obstacle to surmount. The way was long, yet not too long. They +stopped, however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while +leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side of the slope +below the carriage drive, looking down into the green meadows below; +beyond, afar off, there was the white mist-hazed glimpse of a river with +toy houses crowded thickly into the middle distance. + +As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia +with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Sutton’s voice suddenly +broke the silence: + +“I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday.” + +Dosia’s heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that +anybody had spoken his name since he left. She had prayed for him every +night—how she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any other reach +than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in it—fear of +any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting tone of the person +who told it, which she would be powerless to resent; fear of awakening +in herself the echo of that struggle of the past. + +“He’s at the mines, isn’t he?” she questioned, in that tone which she +had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him. + +“Yes; but I don’t believe he’s working there yet. He seems to be mostly +engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds like him, +doesn’t it?” + +“Yes,” assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance. + +“I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there,” pursued Mr. Sutton. +“It’s the worst kind of a life for him. He’s an awfully clever fellow; +he could do anything, if he wanted to. I don’t know any man I admire +more, in certain ways, than I do Barr.” + +Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson’s clever brilliancy, his +social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself +had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond. +“I’ve known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he +came to this place,” he continued. + +“Oh, did you?” cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some +words of Mrs. Leverich’s returned to her—“Mr. Sutton brought Lawson +home last night.” So that was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she +went on: “It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr. Barr. +Everybody here seems to look down on—to despise him.” + +“Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick,” said George, with an unexpected +crude energy; his good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous +expression. “Men talking about him who themselves——” He looked down +sidewise at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more +respectable than he,—respectability might be said to be his cult,—yet +he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein +“ladies” were a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of +confidence by the fact of George Sutton’s presence. His feeling for Barr +and toleration of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that +George himself had also been brought up in one of those small, dull +country towns in which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing +houses have no home in them for a boy and his friends. + +“If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all +right,” he asserted shortly. “Perhaps we’d better be going home; it +looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of +difference in this world, Miss Dosia.” + +“I suppose it does; I’ve never had it,” said Dosia simply. + +“Maybe you’ll have it some day,” returned Mr. Sutton significantly. His +pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road +together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawson’s name had +created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm +throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; _he_ prized +her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show it. He +went on now with genuine emotion: “I know one thing; if—if I had a +wife, she’d never have to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss +Dosia.” + +“She ought to care a good deal for you, then,” suggested Dosia, picking +her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little black ties +finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Sutton’s hand ever on +the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow. + +“No, I wouldn’t ask that; I’d only ask her to let me care for _her_. I +think most men expect too much from their wives,” said George. “I don’t +think they’ve got the right to ask it. And I don’t think a man has any +right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that’s +my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did +me the honor of accepting my hand,”—Mr. Sutton’s voice faltered with +honest emotion,—“I’d spend my life trying to make her happy, I would +indeed, Miss Dosia. I’d take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my +means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her.” + +“I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known,” said Dosia, +with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off, +outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book. +Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she +had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first, +and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted +with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true +and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his +uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love—in short, +“John,” the honest, patient, constant “John” of fiction. His affection +for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim +her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him, +which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really “John”—Dosia +half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman. + +The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile +overspread her face. + +“Here’s the very lady for you now,” she remarked flippantly, as Ada +Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark +cloud in the background, on her way to a friend’s house from service at +the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada’s cheeks took on a not +unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton’s +glance,—a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,—before she went +down the side-road. + +Mr. Sutton’s face reddened also. “Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be very +charming, but I wouldn’t marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl left +in the world. I give you my word I wouldn’t. _You_ ought to know——” + +“We’ll have to hurry, or we’ll be caught in the rain,” interrupted +Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an +affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the house +and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and +Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached the +piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois greeted +Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded the +accustomed dead level. + +“Do come in, you’ll be caught in the rain if you go on. Can’t you stay +to a Sunday night’s tea with us?” + +“Oh, do,” urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze. +Lois’ hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance +lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She +felt a new tie with Mr. Sutton—they both sympathized with Lawson, +believed in him! + +She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little +round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverich’s, which +somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look like a +cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of +the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red +lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort as she +cuddled within Dosia’s half-bare round white arm, while Mr. Sutton, +drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody +else, his round face getting brick-red at times with suppressed emotion, +though he tried to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory +conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin +alternately played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in the +intervals of discourse. + +Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to +darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming storm; +the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down again; the +trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and +white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently from where Dosia +sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side of the street—a +tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy, erect carriage of a +soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite the house, looked over +at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to stop +the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he crossed over with +a quick, decided step. + +“Why, here’s Girard!” cried Justin, rising with alacrity. His voice came +back from the hall. “Awfully glad you took us on your way. Leverich told +you where I lived? You’ll have to stay now until the storm is over. +Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia——” + +“I have already met Mr. Girard,” said Dosia, turning very white, but +speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the +half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he +bowed with politely murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half +across the room, he seated himself by Justin. + +A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt +before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a +sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met +hers—resentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and +lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head +high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched—though he turned +from her a moment to say: + +“Weren’t you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard?” + +“Yes; I thought you didn’t see me,” said the other lightly, himself +turning to respond to a question of Justin’s, which left the other group +out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed himself +with ardor. + +[Illustration: _Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else_] + +There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through +large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there talking +to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin +leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no +one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging personality, +seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, by the side of +Girard. + +Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the +dining-room,—with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following +after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him +away,—came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if +he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As +a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he +much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in +women’s society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of +shyness, of deficiency—perhaps partly caused by the conscious +disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born, but +it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to be credited, +and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like many +very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of attractiveness +himself. + +It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation, +with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light +over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and the +water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond +was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the round +mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled +lilies-of-the-valley in the center. + +The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an +odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this +commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed +to be only a veil for the things of the spirit—subtle +cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions +tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one +knew not what. To Dosia’s swift observation, Girard had lost some of the +brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the ball; he +looked as if he had been under some harassing strain. Her first +impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was reinforced +now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then, +had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, the +hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the shrine of her +memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger. Had he known? He +must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the +most! She could not hear what he said though the room was small; he and +Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was evident that he frankly +admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became +curiously aware that from his position directly across the room he was +covertly watching her as she sat consentingly listening to George +Sutton, whose round face was bending over very near, his thick coat +sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles of hers as it rested on the carved +arm of the little sofa. + +She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its big +blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the simple +rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held. + +Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia’s bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved +a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant +moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of +vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her +imagining—she felt the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those +two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously +so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to +Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was, indeed, in that +stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any concealment, and for +which other men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even while +she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish manifestation of +something inherently great, and a tribute to her power. To Dosia’s +indifference, in this strange dual sense of another and resented +excitement,—an excitement like that produced on the brain by some +intolerably high altitude,—Mr. Sutton’s attentions seemed to breathe +only of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very kind. +She could ask him to do anything for her, and he would do it, no matter +what it was, just because she asked him. He was planning now a day on +somebody’s yacht, with Lois, of course; and “What do you say, Miss +Dosia—can’t we make it a family party, and take the children too?” he +asked, with eager divination of what would please this lovely thing. + +“Yes, oh, why can’t you take _us_?” cried Zaidee, trembling with +delight. + +The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole place +was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosia’s voice was +heard saying: + +“I’ll get my photograph now, if you want it.” She rose and left the +room,—she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,—and Zaidee ran +over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain +against Dosia rosy warm. + +“You had better light the lamp, Justin,” said Lois, and then, “Oh, +you’re not going?” as Girard stood up. + +He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. “I’m afraid I’ll have to.” + +“I expected you to stay to tea; I’ve had a place set for you.” + +“I’d like to very much—it’s kind of you to ask me—but I’m afraid not +to-night. I’ll see you to-morrow, Sutton, I suppose. Good evening, Mrs. +Alexander.” His hand-touch seemed to give an intimacy to the words. + +“Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere,” said Justin, +investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who had followed the +two, stood in the doorway. + +“I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by?” asked Girard +tentatively. + +“Will you, Zaidee?” asked her father, in his turn. + +For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. Girard dropped +on one knee, a very gallant figure of a gentleman, as he put both arms +around the small, light form of the child and held her tightly to him +for one brief instant while his lips pressed that warm cheek. When he +strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in farewell, it was with +an odd, somber effect of having said good-by to a great deal. + +For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had been the +recipient of an emotion called forth by some one else. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVENTEEN + + +“Lois?” + +“Yes?” + +Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary +overhead singing with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her look +gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was busy, as +ever, with—no matter what she was doing—the self-fullness of her +thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to move +into the other house, where, amid new surroundings, she could escape +from the familiar walls and outlook that each brought its suggestion of +pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how she wanted to +be happy. + +Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said: + +“I’ve something to tell you, Lois.” + +“Well?” + +“I’m engaged to George Sutton.” + +“Dosia!” + +Lois’ work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl. + +“I’m sure I don’t see that you need be surprised,” said Dosia. She +looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either +sympathy or interest. + +“No, I suppose not,” said Lois. “Of course, I know he has been paying +you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls almost +as much.” She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a sense, she had +rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve many +difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia—if Dosia could——! +Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without loving him would +have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a physical +impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or support was +outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with cold +disapproval: + +“Dosia, you don’t know what you are doing. You don’t love George +Sutton.” + +Dosia’s face took on the well-known obstinate expression. + +“He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is +satisfied, I don’t see why anyone else need object! He likes me just as +I am, whether I care for him or not.” + +She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that +unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly +subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though +her voice was tremulous. “And I _do_ care for him. I like him better +than anyone I know; we are sympathetic on a great many points. No +one—_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesn’t want anything but +to make me happy.” + +Lois made a gesture of despair. “Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George +Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is +going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what +girls imagine, Dosia.” + +“I suppose so,” said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to +Lois. “Would you like to see my ring?” She turned the circle around on +her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. “He gave it to me +last night.” + +“It is very handsome,” said Lois. “I suppose you will have to be +thinking of clothes soon,” she added, with a glimmer of the natural +feminine interest in all that pertains to a wedding, since further +protest seemed futile. “I will write to Aunt Theodosia.” + +“Thank you,” said Dosia dutifully. + +A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably +beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches, and +strawberries as large as the peaches, and the contents of a box of +flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as +Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge—the former +winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees +nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, jumping on her back whenever +she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered +herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! Nothing could be +sweeter than these. + +In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, she put on +her hat with the roses and went to make a call, long deferred and +hitherto impossible of accomplishment, on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a bride +of a few months, who, as Alice Torrington, had been one of the girls of +her outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but she +felt that Alice Wayne’s state of mind would be more sympathetic, even if +unconsciously so, than Lois’. + +As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful +affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when he +had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him +an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on the +words: + +“I have never known anyone with such a beautiful nature as yours, Miss +Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you happy.” + +He did not himself care for motoring—being, truth to tell, afraid of +it—but she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her +father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter come +up to stay with her after she was married—do anything for them that she +would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the shops in +town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and balls, and dressing them +in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the +time to come! She thought with a little awe that she hadn’t known that +Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And the way he had spoken +of Lawson—Ah, Lawson! That name tugged at her heart; this suddenly +became one of those anguished moments when she yearned over him as over +a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only through her efforts. +She must never forget! “Lawson, I believe in you.” She stopped in the +shaded, quiet street with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the +words aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before +coming back to the eager surface planning of her own life, with an +intermediate throb of a new and deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so +upliftingly faced truth had only strength enough left now to evade it. +Perhaps some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had been +jarred confusingly out of touch. + +[Illustration: _Flowers and children, children and flowers_] + +Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just +returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from +above: + +“Dosia Linden! Won’t you come up-stairs? You don’t mind, do you?” + +“No, indeed,” answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and +pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than +she had expected—an informal reception and talk! With Dosia’s own +responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to +see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white negligée, might be +pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau. + +“I hope you won’t mind the appearance of this room,” she announced, +after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. “I went to town so early +this morning that I didn’t have time to really set things to rights, and +I don’t like the new maid to touch them.” + +“You have so many pretty things,” said Dosia admiringly. + +“Yes, haven’t I? Take that seat by the window, it’s cooler. Please don’t +look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, +though he has his own chiffonier in the other room—he’s such a _bad_ +boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his things for +him.” + +Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly +responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not at +all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a great +deal of “style,” but she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm +of attraction because she was so happy. + +“Have this fan, won’t you?” She went on talking: “Harry and I saw you +and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had +stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the +loveliest thing! What a pity he won’t go where there are girls! Harry is +quite jealous, though I tell him he needn’t be.” Mrs. Wayne paused with +a lovely flush before going on. “You didn’t see us, though we stopped +quite near you. My dear, it’s _very_ evident that—” She paused once +more, this time with arch significance. “Oh, you needn’t be afraid, I +never know anything until I’m told. But George is such a good fellow! +I’m sure I ought to know—he was perfectly devoted to me. He’s not the +kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,—girls are so foolish +and romantic,—but he’d be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says he’s a +lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much happier +married—the right people, of course.” + +“Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?” asked Dosia, as she +lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had +had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, +melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, instead, +one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her finger, +underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes roved +warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and +her husband, folding up her Harry’s neckties as she chattered, her +fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She brought out +some of her pretty dresses afterwards for Dosia’s inspection. From the +open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes was distinctly +visible—Harry’s shoes, which the wife laughingly put back into place as +she went and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even +those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched with sentiment +for her because the feet of her dearest had worn them. + +In Dosia’s world so far it was a matter of course that some people were +married—their household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation +to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to +these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne +had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of +living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an +absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of +her indifference; the room choked her. George Button’s neckties, not to +speak of his shoes——! + +“I’ll have to be going,” she interrupted precipitately, rising as she +spoke. + +“Why,”—Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at her +in surprise,—“what’s the matter? Aren’t you well?” + +“Yes, yes, but I have an appointment,” affirmed Dosia desperately. “I’ve +been enjoying it all so much, but I’d forgotten I must go—at once! +Good-by.” + +She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, but it was +imperative that she should be alone, away from all suggestion of the +newly married. She hoped that there would be no visitors, but as she +neared the house she saw that there was some one on the piazza—George +Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose above his white +waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled the rose in color as he came +to meet her. + +“Why, I thought you were not coming until this evening,” said Dosia +demandingly,—“not until you could see Justin.” + +“Did you think I could stay away as long as that?” asked George. His +manner the night before had been almost reverential in the depth of his +honest emotion; the kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had seemed of +an impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed it. She was +conscious now of a change. + +“Where is Lois?” she asked, as they went up the steps together. + +“The maid said she had stepped out for a moment.” + +“Then we’ll sit here on the piazza and wait for her,” said Dosia, +without looking at her lover. Taking the hat-pins out of her hat, she +deposited it on a chair with a quick decision of movement, and then +seated herself by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking +disappointed, was left perforce to the rocker on the other side. + +The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a rambling vine, open +toward the street; but around the corner of the house Japanese screens +walled it off from passers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet with big +bowls of roses. + +“Come around to the other end of the porch,” said George appealingly. + +“No,” said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; “I like it here.” + +She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread out her hands, +palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, which had been turned inward, +caught the sunshine gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled. +Dosia saw the smile and reddened. + +“I wish you wouldn’t sit there looking at me,” she said in a tone which +she tried to make neutral. + +“Come down to the other end of the piazza—just for a moment.” + +“No!” said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement and changed her tone +sharply: “Oh, there’s a spider on the table there, crawling toward me! +Please take it away.” Her voice rose uncontrollably. “I hate spiders— +oh, I _hate_ spiders! I’m afraid of them. Make it go away! please! +There—now you’ve got it; throw it off the piazza, quick! Don’t bring it +near me!” + +“The little spider won’t hurt you,” said George enjoyingly. + +Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her +deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red +lips quivering, was distractingly lovely; fear gave to her quick, +uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of +his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the +innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb and +forefinger, a little nearer to her—a little nearer yet. There is a type +of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is +an exquisitely funny joke. + +“Don’t,” said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready to fly from the +chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with George’s fatuously smiling +face behind it. The next instant she had fled wildly down to the +screened corner of the veranda, with George after her, only to be +stopped by the screens at the end. His following arms closed tightly +around her as he kissed her in happy triumph. + +After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia stood perfectly +still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession that came into +play at such times. She seemed to yield entirely now to the rightful +caresses of an accepted lover as she said in a perfectly even and casual +tone of voice: + +“Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my handkerchief from +up-stairs. I’ll be right back again.” + +“Don’t be gone long,” said George fondly, releasing her +half-unconsciously at the accent of custom. + +“No,” said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him coquettishly as she +went off with unhurried step—to dart up two pairs of stairs like a +flying, hunted thing, and into her room, to lock the door fast and bolt +it as if from the thoughts that pursued her. + +Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled the door-knob +ineffectually before she knocked. + +“Dosia, what’s the matter? To whom are you talking? Let me in! Katy +said, when she came up, you would not answer—she said Mr. Sutton had +been walking up and down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in; +let me in this minute!” + +The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and the door flew +open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her hair in wild disorder, was +standing in the center of the room, fiercely rubbing her already scarlet +cheeks with a rough towel. Every trace of assumed listlessness had +vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant eyes, and +talking half-disconnectedly. + +“Never let him come here again—never, never!” she appealed to Lois. + +[Illustration: _“Never let him come here again—never, never!_”] + +“Whom do you mean?” + +“George Sutton!” + +A contraction passed over her face; she began rubbing again with renewed +fury. + +“Don’t do that, Dosia! You’ll take the skin off. Stop it!” + +Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel +away from her. “Dosia, sit down by me here on the bed—how you’re +trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not, you’ll take +the skin off your face.” + +“I want to take it off,” whispered Dosia intensely. “I hate him, I hate +him! I never want to see him again. I can’t see him again! I threw the +ring out in the hall somewhere. You’ll have to find it—— I couldn’t +have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can’t see him +again; promise me that I’ll never see him again—promise, _promise_!” +She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that protection. + +“Yes, yes, dear, I promise,” said Lois with a sudden warmth of sympathy +such as she had never before felt for the girl. This situation, this +feeling, she could comprehend—it might have been her own in similar +case. She had known girls before who had been engaged for but a day or a +week, and then revolted; it was not so new a circumstance as the world +fancies. + +She drew the towel now from Dosia’s relaxed fingers, and held her closer +as she said: + +“There, be quiet, Dosia, and don’t make yourself ill. I don’t see what +that poor man is going to do—of course he’ll feel dreadfully; but you +can’t help that now—it’s a great deal better than finding out the +mistake later. I’ll tell him not to come again, I promise you. Of +course, I’ll have to speak to Justin; I don’t know what he will say!” +Lois broke into a rueful smile. “Dosia, Dosia! What scrape will you get +into next?” + +“Isn’t it dreadful!” gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked +at Lois with tragic eyes. + +“Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I +can never be nice again—no one can ever think I’m nice again! No one +can ever—_love_ me in this world!” She buried her hot face in Lois’ +bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the +other’s incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently a +woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the +loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly: + +“It seems so strange—things begin—and you think they are going to turn +out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden they +end—and there is nothing more. Everything is all beginning—and then it +ends—there is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again!” + +“Nonsense! You’ll feel very differently about it all after a while,” +said Lois sensibly. + +“I don’t want to go down-stairs again.” Dosia began to shake violently. +“If he were to come back——” + +“Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner,” said Lois +humoringly. “I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, you’ll have to +promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment +I’m out of the room.” + +“No, I’ll be good,” murmured Dosia submissively. “Oh, Lois, you’re so +kind to me! I love you so much!” + +Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not +eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to the door by the maid, brought in +to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that first +night of her arrival—oh, so long ago!—after tempest and disaster. Yet +then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone down through +everything, and now there was no future, only a murky past, and she a +poor girl who had dropped so far out of the way of happiness that she +could never get back to it, never be nice again. That hand that had once +held hers so firmly, so steadily, that she could sleep secure with just +the comfort of its remembered touch—the thought of it had become only +pain, like everything else. Oh, back of all this shaming hurt with +Lawson and George Sutton was another shame, that went deeper and deeper +still. Since that visit of Bailey Girard’s, she had known that he had +thought of her as she had thought of him, with a knowledge that could +not be controverted. It is astonishing that we, who feel ourselves to be +so dependent on speech as a means of communication, have our intensest, +our most revealing moments without it. He had thought of her as she had +of him, and, with the thought of her in his heart, had been content +easily that it should be no more. + +Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her dreams,—lover, +protector, dearest friend,—to have sought her mightily with the +privilege and the prerogative of a man, so that she might have had no +experience to live through but that white experience with him! + +“Dosia! Open the door quickly.” + +It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She +stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held +out a telegram—for the second time the transmitter of bad news from the +South. The message read: “Your father is ill. Come at once.” + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + + +There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings, +followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition +from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months fly +by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone, there +is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too much stress +on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the current of our +lives, and do not take into account that drama which never ceases to be +acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which takes place within +ourselves. + +It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after +extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but +temporary—a condition to be ended next week or the week after at +farthest. Her father’s illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking +every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter; and after +his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while, with only +Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, +looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness +and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn +money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to some of the +temporary tribe at the hotel—an existence in which self was submerged +in loving care for those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was +always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and too much +of a luxury to have any of its precious moments wasted in wakeful +dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about any more. But when +she crept into her low bed she turned away from the moonlight, because +there are times, when one is young, when moonlight is very hard to bear. + +The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of its +resources, when Mrs. Linden’s brother in San Francisco offered her and +her children a home with him—an offer which, naturally, did not include +Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she had worked +so hard for them, they were not to belong to her for her very own. The +aunt whose generosity had given her the money for her musical education +had also died, leaving a small sum in trust for the girl; it was that +which furnished her with means when she went once more to stay at the +Alexanders’. Justin himself had written to see if she could come. + +There was another baby now, a couple of months old, and Lois needed her. +No fairy-story maiden this, going out to seek her fortune, who took an +uneventful train journey this time—only a very tired girl, worn with +work and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to lean her head +against the back of the car-seat and feel the burden of anxiety and care +slip from her for a little while. + +Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for those whom we love +may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin, the blue veins on +her temples showed more plainly, her face was no longer the typical +white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and +inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had tasted +of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known suffering, +she had faced shame and disappointment and—truth; yes, through +everything she had faced that—taken herself to account, probed, +condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained +in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from +a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she +might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into +being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet—the soul of that Dosia +who was made to be loved. + +If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago, so +had the conditions changed in the household to which she went. Justin +had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has achieved +what he has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the +silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously drops +through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business, +quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big +enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had +been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been +hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small +rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring town—both glad, +in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful arbiter. +Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in request by +fifty people now, for many things—for many more, indeed, than had been +thought of at first; every week plans in special adjustments were made +to fit the machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not only a +success in itself, but was destined to fit into more and more of the +needs of the working world as a standard product. + +Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over +to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted to +see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and +successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of all +this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits had +always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in +constant and growing need of money. + +Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increased—prices of +copper and steel, of machinery, of wages, in addition to the larger +number of hands employed, and the rent of the additional floor. It was +always necessary for one’s peace of mind to go back to the value of the +material stock and the assets to be counted on in the future. The steady +branching out of the business in every direction was proof of the fact +that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, +fewer opportunities—financial suicide. + +It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be +seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened. +If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the +doors must open farther. No matter how one tries to see all around the +consequences of any change, any undertaking, there always arise minor +consequences which from their very nature must be unforeseen, and yet +which may turn out to be the really powerful factors in the main issue; +unimportant genii that, let out of their bottles, swell immeasurably. +The consequences of the fire, small as it was, seemed never-ending. The +defective bars had proved a disastrous supply for the machine, in more +ways than one. + +Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his own retrieval, he +had borrowed the ten thousand from Lewiston, and had used part of the +money to pay the interest to the others; and later, in the flush of +reinstatement, he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, a +loan to be called by him at any time. Lewiston’s loan had seemed easy of +repayment at six months, Justin knew when the money was coming in, but +he had been obliged, after all, to anticipate, and get his bills +discounted before they came due for other purposes, often paying huge +tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed the note for sixty days, +and then for sixty more, but with the proviso that this was the last +extension. + +In short, the whole process of competently keeping afloat had been gone +through, with a definite aim of accomplishment; Cater’s cooperation, +about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the +business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money +and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. Justin had +approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him +cautiously negative where once he had seemed friendlily suggesting. + +Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power of the man behind +it, which must not only comprehend and direct the larger issues, but +must be able to carry along smoothly all the easily entangling threads +of detail; he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have the +untiring nervous energy that can “hold out” through any crisis. Such men +may go to pieces after incredible effort, but they are on the way to +success first. Danger only quickens the sure leap to safety. + +Justin, preëminently clear-headed, had been conscious lately of two +phases—one an almost preternatural illumination of intellect, and the +other a sort of brain-inertia, more soul- and body-fatiguing than any +pain. There were seasons when he was obliged to think when he could +instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, competent, but +underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation +and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first night +of his agreement with Leverich was as a child’s play with toy bricks is +to the building of an edifice of stone. + +The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely with the +daily need of money at home for petty uses; a condition of affairs which +often happens at the birth of a child, when the household is at loose +ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater in every direction at the +time when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed never to +have enough “change” in his pockets, no matter how much he brought home. + +In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing +when there is no other passion to divide them—the nature grows all one +way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always as +dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of affection, +the love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of all +men—that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the cause of +the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone out from +this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift. + +Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when +she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she had +always added the proviso, “if he could afford it,” and accepted the fact +either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and more +affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she keenly +felt, less personally loving. + +If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to go +out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on the +lounge; and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner thread +of sympathy was lacking. + +Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the +most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which +she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending as +she cowered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold and +chill for lack of that vital warmth. + +There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him, but +always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that which +seemed as if it could never change began to change. + +Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference. +Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane and +heroic in times of real danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave, +thoughtful for Zaidee and Hedge and Justin even while she trembled, +excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband. + +Then, afterwards, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in at +the end of each day and sat down by his wife’s bedside, holding her +blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a sweet, +sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though +the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that +one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had +been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct +calamitous illness to which she looked forward as one might look forward +to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a +manifestation of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that of a +child, to be soothed by reason. + +Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging fear. One cause +for disquieting thought was removed. Now the helplessness of this little +family, for whom he was the provider, tugged at a swelling heart. + +As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than was his wont, +he diverged from his usual custom—instead of entering his own doorway, +he went across the street to Cater’s after a moment’s hesitation. Now +that Cater’s cooperation was at the consummating point, it was wiser not +to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich and Martin were keenly for +its success, Justin’s credit would rise immeasurably with it. The +Typometer Company had absorbed the minor machines with so little trouble +that the unabsorbability of the timoscript had seemed an unnecessary +stumbling block. Time and time again Justin had sought Cater with +tabulated figures and unanswerable arguments. The combination, he firmly +believed, would be highly beneficial for both—the field was, in its +way, too narrow to be divided with the highest profit; together they +could command the trade. + +Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,—a word against which +he was principled, with obstinate refusal to differentiate as to kind, +quality, or intent. Like many men who are given to a far-seeing +philosophy in speech, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to +action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring to be +continually reassured about conditions which seemed the very a-b-c of +commerce. The rivalry between the two firms had been apparently +good-natured, yet a little of the sharp edge of competition had shown +signs of cutting through the bond. + +The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript had cut under; +then the typometer had gone as low as was wise, and the timoscript had +begun to weaken in its defenses. + +Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, but rose to +shake hands. There was a look of melancholy in his eyes, in spite of his +smile of greeting. + +“Anything wrong with you?” asked Justin, instinctively noticing the look +rather than the smile. + +“No,” said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, and leaned back, +the light from the high unshaded window striking full on his lean yellow +countenance. “No, there’s nothing wrong. Got some things off my mind, +things that have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon I don’t +feel quite easy without ’em.” + +“I think you’re very lucky,” said Justin. The light from the high window +fell on his face, too—on his brown hair, turning a little gray at the +temples, on the set lines of his face, in which his eyes, keen and blue, +looked intently at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot that was +crossed over his knee was excellently shod. + +Cater shifted a little in his seat. “Well, I don’t know. My experience +is some different from the usual run, I reckon; I never had any big +streak of luck that it didn’t get back at me afterwards. There was my +marriage—I know it ain’t the thing to talk about your marriage, but you +do sometimes. My wife’s a fine woman,—yes, sir, I was mighty lucky to +get her,—but I didn’t know how to live up to her family. It’s been +that-a-way all my life. Sure’s I get to ringin’ the bells, the floorin’ +caves in under me.” + +“We’ll see that the flooring holds, now that you’re coming in with us,” +said Justin good-naturedly. “I’ve got some propositions to put up to you +to-day.” + +Cater shook his head. “There’s no use of your putting up any +propositions. I’ve been drawin’ on my well of thought so hard lately +that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin’ plumb across the street. +I’ve been cipherin’ down to the fact that I can’t go it alone, any +more’n you,—there we agree; hold on, now!—but I can’t combine.” + +“You can’t!” cried Justin, with unusual violence. “Why not?” + +“Well, you know my feelin’s about trusts, and—I like you, Mr. +Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin’. I +don’t believe in it. It’ll fail when you count on it most, it’ll cramp +on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isn’t +so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can’t stand Martin havin’ +a finger in any concern _I_ have a hold of.” + +“He’s clever enough to make what he touches pay,” said Justin. + +Cater’s eyebrows contracted. “You say he’s clever because he’s +tricky—because he’s sharp. He isn’t clever enough to make money +honestly, he isn’t big enough. You and me, we’re honest, or try to be, +but we haven’t the brain to give every man his just due, and get ahead, +too. It’s the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to play +it! You and me, we can’t do it; we ain’t got the brain and we ain’t got +the nerve; _I_ haven’t. You’ve just ever-lastingly got to do the best +for yourself if you’ve got a family; the best _as_ you see it.” + +“What’s all this leading up to? What change have you been making, +Cater?” asked Justin, with stern abruptness. + +“I’ve given the agency of the machine to Hardanger.” + +“Hardanger!” Justin’s face flushed momentarily, then became set and +expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then +tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger! + +“I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this change,” +continued Cater. “I’ve been getting the steel fittin’s on contract from +Benschoten again, as I did at first; it’ll come cheaper in the end. +Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was sorry—I was sorry +to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? I’ve got to +cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can now.” + +“I suppose so.” + +“I wanted to tell you the first one,” said Cater. + +“Well, I congratulate you,” said Justin formally, rising. + +“This isn’t going to make any difference in the friendship between me +and you, Mr. Alexander? I’ve thought a powerful lot of your friendship. +If I’d ’a’ seen any way to have come in with you, I’d ’a’ done it. But +business ain’t going to interfere between two such good friends as we +are!” + +“Why, no,” said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal which +still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false. The +handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship seemed to +dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice. + +_Hardanger!_ + +Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors in the trade of +two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by Hardanger & Co. +meant its success—they took nothing that was not likely to succeed; +they _made_ it succeed—for them. Their agents in all parts of the known +world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard to be reached +by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was unassailed; they kept +scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only bar to putting an +article into their hands was the fact that their terms—except in the +case of certain standard articles which they were obliged to +have—embraced nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins +coming to the original owners. Everything had to be figured down, and +still further and further down, by those owners, to make that margin +possible. It was cut-throat all the way through—a policy that made for +the rottenness of trade. + +Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations as to +Hardanger, with the conclusion that there was far more money outside, +even if one must go a little more slowly. It was better to go a little +more slowly, for the sake of getting so much more out of it in the end. +Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything else failed. +Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same way; that was the +understanding between them. But now? Backed by this powerful agency, the +timoscript assumed disquieting proportions. In the distance, a time not +so very far distant either, Justin could see himself squeezed to the +wall, the output of his factory bought up by Hardanger for the price of +old iron—forced into it, whether he would or no. Why had he been so +short-sighted? Why hadn’t he made terms himself sooner? But Cater had +been a fool to give in to those terms when, by combining, they could +have swung trade between them to their own measure. Then Hardanger might +have been obliged to seek _them_, to take their price!—Hardanger, who +could afford to laugh at his pretensions now! + +He thought of Cater without malice—with, instead, a shrewd, kind +philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of pity mixed with his wonder. +So that was the way a man was caught stumbling between the meshes, +blinded, dulled, unconsciously maimed of honor, while still feeling +himself erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written agreement +between them that either should consult the other before seeking +Hardanger; but some promises should be all the stronger for not being +written. + +This thing _couldn’t_ happen; in some way, he must get his foot inside +the door, so that it couldn’t shut on him. There was that note of +Lewiston’s, due in thirty days—no, twenty-five now. What about that? + +Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after drayful of +boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the foreman, came into the +office with some estimates, pointing out the figures with a small strip +of steel tubing held absently in his fingers. + +While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign birth +obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than sturdily +independent—the air and the eye of the skilled mechanic. On his own +ground he was master, and Justin, with a smile, deferred to him. But +Justin broke into Bullen’s calculations abruptly, after a while, to ask: + +“What’s that you’ve got there? It looks like one of those bars that +nearly smashed us.” + +“You’ve got a good eye, sir,” said Bullen approvingly. “A year and a +half ago you’d not have seen any difference between one bit of steel and +another. But there’s one thing I didn’t see about it myself until +Venly—he’s a new man we’ve taken on—pointed it out to me. He came +across a case of these to-day we’d thrown out in the waste-heap. We +thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a +fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a +minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they weren’t from the +Benschoten factory—he was turned off from there last week, they’re +cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked +like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the +magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, ’twas right he was! He +says they’ve got piles of them they’ve been workin’ off on the trade at +a cut price. Venly he said he didn’t have any stomach for a skin game +like that.” + +“That’s a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn’t it?” asked Justin. + +“Oh, they’re going to sell out in July, so they don’t care. I pity +anyone that’s counting on any sort of machine that’s got these in ’em. +Would you take the glass and look for yourself, sir? Every one of ’em is +flawed!” + + + + +CHAPTER NINETEEN + + +“Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a—” Leverich’s words were +not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat +tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not +meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarling—a +wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on +Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute +anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, +chill self-possession. + +“You’re sure the agreement’s made?” + +“Cater’s been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the +past three days; he’s loaded up with machines.” + +Leverich swore again. “D——d fools, not to have made terms with +Hardanger first! If we’d only known! If there was only some way to put a +spoke in the wheel, even yet!” + +“Oh, I’ve got the spoke, easily enough,” said Justin indifferently, “the +only trouble is, I can’t use it.” + +“Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn’t you say that before?” Leverich came +down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling +ahead on its casters. “What are you sitting here for? What do you mean +by telling me that you can’t use it?” + +“Just what I say. But it’s not worth talking about.” + +“See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his?” + +“I suppose I might.” + +“And you’re not going to do it?” + +“I can’t, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way +that I can’t touch it.” + +“‘The information—’ It’s something damaging to do with the machine?” + +Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without answering. + +“You have proof?” + +“What’s the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, I tell you, I can’t +use it. This isn’t any funny business, you can see that. Don’t you +suppose, if I could use it, that I would? But there are some things a +man can’t do—at any rate, _I_ can’t. And that settles it.” + +Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently enough in the last +few days, since the combination had been unwillingly given into his +hands, but always with the foregone conclusion. The devil—granting that +there is one,—doesn’t, as a rule, actively try to tempt us to evil—he +simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our reason. But this +time he had no field for action. To use secret information against +Cater, that could never have been had but for Cater’s kindness to him in +helping him to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every +time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for argument to suggest +that this very deed of kindness had worked his disaster—the fact +remained the same. He might do other things, he might do worse +things—this thing he could not do, not though the refusal worked his +own ruin, not though Cater’s ruin with Hardanger was insured anyway, but +too late for the typometer to profit by it. Even if the typometer could +by some means keep afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple +of years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a foreign +country. + +Justin had no excess of sentiment, no quixotic impulse urged him to go +and tell Cater what he had learned. It was Cater’s business to look +after his end of the game, if the price of material or labor was too +cheap, he must know that there was something wrong with it. The stream +of Justin’s mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice +toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon +that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now +with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a +situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled +with. + +“How about your obligations? Do you call this fair dealing to us, +Alexander? There’s Lewiston’s note—once this deal was settled we would +have paid that, as you know. But it’s out of the question as things +stand. We’ll have to get our money out the best way we can. If this is +your sense of honor—to sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, +let’s talk this out. When it comes to talking of ruin, no man can afford +to stand on terms. We didn’t put you into the typometer business on any +kindergarten principles—it isn’t to form your character. What we did, +we did for profit; and if the profit isn’t there, we get out. We’ve no +objection to doing a kindness for anyone, if we can do it and make a +profit, but it stands to reason that we’re not in the business for +philanthropy any more than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we +were willing to give you a place in the game if you could run it to suit +us, but we don’t consider any scheme that doesn’t make money—what +doesn’t make money has to go. Profit, profit, profit—that’s what every +sane man puts first, and there’s no justice in losing a chance to make +it. What you lose, another man takes—if you make another man’s wife and +children better off, you stint your own. You’ve got to consider a +question on all sides. No woman respects a man who can’t make money; +it’s his everlasting business to make money, and she knows it. Your wife +won’t think much of your fine scruples if she’s to go without for +’em—and, by the Lord, she’s right! When you go into business, you’ve +got to make up your mind to one of two things: you’ve either got to step +hard on the necks of those below you, or you’ve got to lie down and let +them wipe their feet on you.” + +Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. Since none +was offered, he went on, with the large and easy manner of one who feels +the justice of his convictions: “No man ever accused me of being close. +I’m free-handed, if I say it that shouldn’t. I like to give, and I _do_ +give. If there’s money wanted for charity, the committees know very well +where to come. And my wife likes to give, too; her name’s on the books +of twenty charitable organizations. But we give out of money I’ve made +by _not_ being free-handed—by getting every last cent that belonged to +me. You see, I don’t leave my wife out of my calculations—any man’s a +fool that does. She’s got the right to have as good as I can give her. I +wouldn’t talk like this to most men, Alexander, but between you and me +it’s different. It pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when you’ve +got to go home after a hard day’s work; you take a dissatisfied woman, +and she’ll make your home a hell. I know men—Great Scott! I don’t know +how they live!” He paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his +head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side of him. + +“When I say I’ve made the money,” continued Leverich, “I mean that I +actually _have_ made most of it—made it out of nothing! like the first +chapter of Genesis. If a man has money to start with, he can add to it +as easily as you can roll up a snowball—it’s no credit to him. But I’ve +had only my brains. I’ve seen money where other men couldn’t, and +nothing has stood in my way of getting to it; that’s the whole secret of +success. And my attitude’s fair—you couldn’t find a fairer. When one of +your clerks falls sick, you pay him his full salary for three or four +months till he’s around again. _I_ know! Well, I don’t do any such +stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list once for three +months, and nobody paid me. After the first month I was bounced, and I +didn’t expect anything else. I didn’t expect any philanthropical +business, and I don’t give it. That’s fair, isn’t it? I don’t give +quarter, and I don’t expect any. If I’m squeezed, I pay. I don’t stand +still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can do and what I +can’t do. I don’t snivel about what you call moral obligations; I only +recognize money obligations. Why, see here, Alexander,” he broke off, +“if you use the influence you spoke of, you don’t have to tell me what +it is—you don’t have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater himself +needn’t know that you had anything to do with it.” + +“But I’d know,” said Justin quietly. + +Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded. + +“Very well, then, it comes down to this: If you fail us now, out of any +of your fool scruples toward that poor devil across the street,—who’s +bound to get the blood sucked out of him anyway,—you ruin your own +prospects, and you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. +By——, if you see any honor in that, I don’t.” + +“Mr. Leverich,” said Justin, raising his head swiftly, with a steely +gleam in his eyes that matched the other’s, “when I try to cheat you or +Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, I’ll give you +leave to say what you please. At present I’ll say good morning.” + +Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his +desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so, +against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next +room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge +that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than +the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. +Warren, of Rondell Brothers. Each turned to look back at the other, and +both men bowed; the action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted +by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the +street. + +The clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt actively +stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward Lewiston’s +note the different sums coming in this month. There were large bills to +be paid to the typometer’s credit by several firms, one of them +Coneways’. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for the +entire year—it was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to +Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next, +Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their +principal after these intervening six months of the year were over. +Well, let them! Lewiston’s note was what he had to think of now. + +All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious to the +sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate +success; it is the one trite, universal reason for starting—that faith +is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful +ventures, while never really succeeding, do not fail at once; they are +always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking lower all the +time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith +alone—a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to +seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this +flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. +For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, +failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he +should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think +harder to find a way of accomplishment, that was all. + +His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverich’s, but it +lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned down the street that led to +the factory, unaltered, since his first coming to it, save for the +transformation of the neglected house he had noticed then, with its +grewsome interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted shop +long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. There was not a +corner, not a building, along that too familiar way, that was not hung +with some thought of care; there were moments of such strong repulsion +that he felt as if he couldn’t turn down that street again—moments +lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched yawning mouth +of a doorway occasioned a physical nausea—a foolish, womanish state +which irritated him. + +The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment of orders and +bills, and letters on minor points, and questions as to the typometer. +The mail was rather apt to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large +trade. Two letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium on +the use of the machine. In spite of an enormous and long-outstanding +bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for payment—one of +those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become +staggering—there was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the +destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power. + +A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in his employ, came in +to get help in collecting his insurance; she was timid before Justin, +deeply grateful for his kind and effective assistance. Two men called at +different times, for advice and introductions to important people. A +friend brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. There +was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to do with the payment +of one’s bills. + +Justin took both the friend and the customer out to lunch, his pleasant +sense of hospitality only dimmed by the disagreeable fact of its taking +every cent of the five dollars he had expected to last him for the week. +He was “strapped.” The luncheon took longer, also, than he had counted +on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed to lead up only to sordid +and anxious details and a sense of non-accomplishment, induced also by +small requisitions from different people presupposing cash from a +cash-drawer that was empty. + +It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harker’s assistance, on the +large sums coming in at the end of the month from Coneways. There were a +hundred ways for them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, +after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would be satisfied +with a partial payment and extend the rest of the note. While they were +still consulting, word was brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there. + +Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, +smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and fashion set at odds at +present by a very pale and anxious face and eager, dilated black eyes. +He cut short Justin’s greeting with the words: + +“I’ve just come over to speak about that note, Alexander.” + +“Well, I was just wanting to speak to you about it myself,” said Justin +easily. “Have a cigar?” + +“Thank you,” said Lewiston mechanically, and as mechanically holding out +his hand for the cigar, evidently forgetting it the next moment. “The +fact is, I don’t want to seem importunate, but if you could pay off that +note fifteen days before date,—a week from to-day, that is,—we’d +discount it to satisfy you. I didn’t want to bother you about it, and I +tried outside first, but nobody will take up the paper just now, except +at a ruinous rate. If you could make it convenient, Alexander——” Young +Lewiston sat with his small, eager face bent forward over his knees, his +lips twitching slightly. “You know that money wasn’t loaned on strictly +business principles, Alexander, but for friendship; I got father to +consent to it. If you could let us have it now, it would save us a world +of trouble. It’s really not much—only ten thousand.” + +Justin shook his head, his keen blue eyes fixed on the other. “I can’t +let you have it, Lewiston; I wish I could! But I’m waiting on payments +myself. Can’t you pull out without it?” + +Lewiston drew in his breath. “Oh, yes, of course we’ll have to, but it +means—Well, I know you would if you could, Alexander, I told father +so—father in a way holds me responsible, he was in London when I +renewed the note the last time. There isn’t anything to interfere with +the payment when it’s due?” + +“On my honor, no,” said Justin. “You shall have it then without fail.” + +“For if that should slip up—” continued young Lewiston, wrapped in +somber contemplation of his own affairs alone; he threw his arms outward +with a gesture suddenly tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then +wrung Justin’s hand silently and departed. + +“Are you busy, Alexander? They said I could come in.” + +“Why, Girard!” + +Justin wheeled a chair around with an instantly brightened face. “Sit +down. I’m mighty glad to see you.” He looked smilingly at his visitor, +whose presence, long-limbed, straight, clean, and clear-eyed, always +elicited a peculiar admiration from other men. “I heard that you had a +room at the Snows’ now, while Billy is away, but I haven’t laid eyes on +you for a month.” + +“I’ve been coming in on a later train every morning and going out again +on a very much later one at night. I’m back in town on the paper for a +while.” + +“Why don’t you settle down to something worth while?” asked Justin, with +the reserved disapproval of the business man for any mode of life but +his own. + +“Settle down to this kind of thing?” said Girard thoughtfully. “Well, I +did think of it last year, when I undertook those commissions for you. +But what’s the use—yet awhile, at any rate? You see, I can always make +enough money for what I want and to spare, and there’s nobody else to +care. I like my liberty! The love of trade doesn’t take hold of me, +somehow—and you have to have such a tremendous amount of capital to +keep your place. By the way, have you sold the island yet?” The island +was a small one up near Nova Scotia, taken once for a debt. + +“Not yet.” + +Girard gave him a quick glance—with the instant penetration of a man +who has known hard times himself, he detected the signs of it in +another; the perception lent a sort of under-warmth and kindness to his +voice as he asked: “How are things going with you?” + +“Fine,” said Justin in a conventionally prosperous tone, with a sudden +sight of a bottomless pit yawning below him. “I’ve had a few things on +my mind lately—but they’re all right now. By the way, how do you like +it at the Snows’?” + +“Oh, fairly well.” Girard’s gray eyes twinkled in an irrepressible +smile. “I score high at present. They all approve of me, and I am told +that I am the only man who has never run into the Boston fern or got +tangled in the Wandering Jew. Miss Bertha and I have long talks +together—she’s great. As for Mrs. Snow—she heard Sutton speak of her +the other night to Ada as ‘the old lady.’ I assure you that since—” He +shook his head, and both men laughed. + +“Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again,” said Justin +hospitably, indescribably cheered by some soul-offered sympathy that lay +below the trivial converse. + +“Thank you,” said Girard, an indefinable stiffening change coming over +him momentarily, to disappear at once, however, as he went on: “By the +way, I mustn’t forget what I came for before I hurry off.” + +He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as he rose. “Do +you remember lending that fifty dollars to my friend Keston last year? +He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this.” + +“I’d forgotten all about it,” averred Justin. He had not realized until +he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength, +with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of it—nothing +back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of +life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand +dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with +this paltry fifty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free +breath, felt a sheer, uncalculating lightness of spirit that showed how +terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very +feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine. + +He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to +Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers: + +“Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways’ isn’t due +until the 31st—the very last minute! But he’s always prompt, thank +Heaven—what are you doing?” + +“Knocking on wood,” said Harker, with a grim smile. + +“Oh, knock on wood all you want to,” returned Justin. + +He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers. +It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week. +While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his +eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: + + GREAT CRASH + CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL + IN BOSTON + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY + + +“I don’t think Justin looks very well,” said Dosia that afternoon. She +was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out +half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been +up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she +looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not very strong. + +The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with only a round +forehead and a small pink nose visible, was of that satisfactory variety +entirely given to sleep; Zaidee and even Redge, adoring little sister +and brother, had been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely +unstirring was their small burden. Lois, who had passionately rebelled +against the prospect of additional motherhood, exhibited a not unusual +phase of it now in as passionately adoring this second boy. He seemed +peculiarly, intensely her own, not only a baby, but a spiritual +possession that communicated a new strength to her. Lois was changed. +She had always been beautiful, as a matter of fact, but there was now +something withheld, mysterious, in her expression, as if she were taking +counsel of some half-slumberous force within, like one listening at a +shell for the murmur of the ocean. + +Not only Lois, but everything else, seemed changed to Dosia, at the same +time being also flatly, unchangeably natural. She had longed—oh, how +she had longed!—to be back here. Even while loving and working in her +so-called home, she had felt that this was her real home, although here +her cruelest blows had fallen on her; even while bleeding with the +wrench of parting from her own flesh and blood, she had felt that this +was the true home, for here she had really lived—and it was the home of +the nicer, more delicate instincts. After the crude housekeeping, the +lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing a grinding struggle with +circumstance, it was a blessed relief to get back to a sphere where +minor details were all in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, +with their three children, kept only one maid now, but even that +restriction did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and cold water! + +Yet she had also dreaded this returning,—how she had dreaded it!—with +that old sickening shame which came over her inevitably as she thought +of certain people and places and days. The mere thought of seeing Mrs. +Leverich or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was like passing +through fire. One braces one’s self to withstand the pain of scenes of +joy or sorrow revisited, to find that, after all, when the moment comes, +there is little of that dreaded pain—it has been lived through and the +climax passed in that previsioning which imagination made more intense, +more harrowingly real, than the reality. + +[Illustration: _Even Redge had been allowed to hold him_] + +Mrs. Leverich stopped her carriage one day to greet Dosia, and to ask +her, with a tentative semblance of her old effusion, to come and make +her a visit—an effusion which immediately died down into complete +non-interest, on Dosia’s polite refusal; and the incident was not +especially heart-racking at the time, though afterwards it set her +unaccountably trembling. Mrs. Leverich had in the carriage with her a +small, thin, long-nosed, under-bred-looking man with a pale-reddish +mustache and hair, who, gossip said, passed most of his time at the +Leverichs’—he was seen out driving alone with Myra nearly every day. He +was “an old friend from home.” It had been gossip at first, but it was +growing to be scandal now, with audible wonder as to how much Mr. +Leverich knew about it. + +Her avoidance of George Sutton was as nothing to his desire of avoiding +her; he dived with surreptitious haste down side streets when he saw her +coming, or disappeared within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted +him inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce to take +off his hat and murmur, “Good morning,” he turned pale and was evidently +scared to death. After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snow—usually Ada and her mother, +though occasionally Bertha served as escort instead of the latter. The +elder Snows, in spite of this apparent security, were in a state of +constant nervous tension over Mr. Sutton’s attention to Ada; he had not +“spoken” yet, but it had begun to be felt severely of late that he ought +to speak. Whenever Ada came into the house, her face was eagerly scanned +by both mother and sister to see from its look if it bore any trace of +the fateful words having been uttered. Everyone knew, though how no one +could tell, that that bold thing, Dosia Linden, had tried to get him +once, and failed. + +The thing that had unaccountably stirred her most since her arrival was +an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge +held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily +along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the +post-office; he seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw +back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them +white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, +with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, +and came forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright courtesy, a +punctilious warmth of manner. He walked along with her a few paces as he +talked, lifting Zaidee over a flooded crossing, before going once more +on his way. He was nothing to Dosia, the stranger who had killed her +ideal, yet all day it was as if his image were photographed in the +colors of life upon the retina of her eye; she could not push it away, +try as she might. + +Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through +the letters written by Lois; he had been reported as going on in his old +way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing +more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except +Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her now position of +sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an +outsider any more; she _belonged_. + +[Illustration: _After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snow_] + +As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with +something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be +loved, now felt—after a year of trial and conflict with death—that she +only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even +though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and +tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, +fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal +depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but +when Dosia “said her prayers,” she got, child-fashion, very near to a +Someone who brought her an intimate, tender comfort of resurrection and +of life. + +“I don’t think Justin seems well,” she repeated, Lois, looking up at her +with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice +of the remark. “He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I +came.” + +“He has something on his mind,” assented Lois, with a note of languor in +her voice, “I suppose it’s the business—I made up my mind to ask him +about it to-night; he has been out every evening lately, and I hardly +see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don’t get +down to breakfast.” + +“Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning,” cried Dosia, with +compunction at having so far forgotten it. “He said that Mr. Larue had +come in to inquire about you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket +of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow.” + +“Eugene Larue!” Lois’ lips relaxed into a pleased curve, a slight color +touched her cheek. “That was very nice of him; he knew I’d like to look +forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!” + +“I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after you,” continued +Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that +tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes. + +“Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows’. Billy’s out West.” + +“So I’ve heard,” said Dosia. + +It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of +all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her +pathway now, after that desire was gone! + +“You’d better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired, it’s time for +you to take a little rest. I’ll see to the children, I hope baby will +stay asleep. Let me put this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the +shades?” + +“No, I’d rather have the light. Please hand me that book over there on +the stand,” said Lois, holding out her hand for the big, old-fashioned +brown volume that Dosia brought to her. + +“You oughtn’t to read, you ought to go to sleep,” said Dosia, with +tender severity. + +“I’m not going to read,” returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over +the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the +sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with +him—alone with him, to think. + +The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the title-page +proclaimed, “The Woman’s Kingdom,” and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A +neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her +convalescence—in all the time she had had it, she had never read any +further than that title-page. + +There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another +son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a +woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again, +spiritually as well as physically; in those long, restful hours +afterwards, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a +freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed +tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger +bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision, and a +peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown +before. + +Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward +either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little +boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible +corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her—for a +little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of +those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; +even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on +one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet +to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband’s gaze when +he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk +about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was +as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child. + +One evening he came in to sit by her,—her convalescence had been a long +and dragging one,—and she had paused in the midst of telling him +something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised +herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had +fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly +exhausted! Everything proclaimed it—his attitude, grimly grotesque in +the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he +had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head +resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply +upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in +those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the +transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly +lifeless. He slept without moving,—almost, it seemed, without +breathing,—while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, +dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed +change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she +stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed +to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an +icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, +never—— + +Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, “Did you +speak?” + +“Oh, you frightened me so! Don’t go to sleep like that again,” said +Lois, with a shaking voice. “Come here.” + +He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers +with a rush of painful emotion. “Why, you mustn’t get worked up over a +little thing like that,” he objected lightly, going out of the room +afterwards with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him +with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought +of him without any idea of benefit to herself. + +The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her +attention oddly—“The Woman’s Kingdom.” Another phrase correlated with +it in her memory—“Queen of the Home.” The home was supposed to be +woman’s domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, +sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. _The Woman’s Kingdom, +Queen of the Home._ Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of +retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby’s fingers; _they_ +kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, +bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a +queen! Home and the heart of her husband—there lay her woman’s kingdom, +her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none +other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as +her rule made it; she must be judged by her government—as she was queen +enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words. + +Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,—set +in motion by those magic words,—when she lay at rest in the afternoons, +with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside +her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never +perceive from imagination, but only from experience—who cannot even +adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not +personally lived through. No advice touches them, for the words that +embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past +seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same +circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom +look back—the present, that is always climbing on into the future, +occupies them exclusively. + +Lois with “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand, felt that some source of +power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her +grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish +thoughts came with the words—historic names of women whom men had loved +devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they +themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There +were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other +generations; Queens indeed! She couldn’t really interest one man! She +thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those +who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the +street had no other object in life than purveying to the household +comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from +him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple +farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage, +nothing more; they were bored to death by each other’s society. Another +couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both +sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be +satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were +an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very +much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one +husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young. +Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man +admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired +her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, +betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it +accomplished? + +How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue—she +could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of +conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations +were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her +woman’s kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if +he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to +know—get his guidance—But Lois was before all things inviolably a +wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and +Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief +moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, +conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene +Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that +way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she +and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had +known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test—the man who +was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband. +Justin! + +With “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek +of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some +knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now +really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well—that +was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make +him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; +she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able +to think of nothing, of no one, but her—he had not always thought of +her! No, no—she would not remember that, _she would not pity herself_. +She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort—men liked you +to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of +his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, +painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he +didn’t look well. Oh, when he came home to-night——! + +She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown +with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more +brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply +blue. The children exclaimed over their “pretty mamma”; she looked +younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could +not help saying: + +“How lovely you are, Lois! And you’re all dressed up, too; do you expect +anyone?” + +“Only Justin,” said Lois. + +“Only Justin”! The words brought an exquisite joy with them—only +Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour +now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was +often late—Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two +women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterwards, an +unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop; Lois, divested of her +rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and +soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help +unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an +interval of quiet she went up again, to find Lois at last lying down. + +“It’s eleven o’clock, Lois; I think I’ll go to bed. Shall I leave the +gas burning down-stairs?” + +“Yes, please do; he can’t get anything now but the last train out.” + +“And you don’t want me to stay here with you?” + +“No—oh, no.” + +As once before, Lois waited for that train—yet how differently! If that +injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word, +she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed +itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity +herself—she would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that +way. + +The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, as she got up and +sat by the window, looking out from behind the curtain, her beautiful +braided hair over one shoulder. The last train came in, the people from +it, in twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. He +must have missed that last train out—of course he must have missed it! + +We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; the amount of +“worry” more or less willingly indulged in by uncontrolled minds seems +at times enough to swamp the understanding. Yet there is a foreboding, +unsought, unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be +counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed quality of +truth. + +Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE + + +“And you haven’t heard _anything_ of him yet?” + +“Not yet, Mrs. Alexander. I’m sorry—oh, so sorry—to have nothing more +to tell you. But I’m sure we’ll hear something before morning.” + +Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly on +Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little hallway, looking up at +him, with Dosia behind her. This was the third night since that one when +Justin had failed to appear, and there had been no word from him in the +interim. Owing to that curious way that women have of waiting for events +to happen that will end suspense, rather than seeking to end it by any +unaccustomed action of their own, no inquiry had been made at the +Typometer Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which had +been passed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing +him walk in. However, nobody at the company knew anything of Justin’s +movements, except that he had left the office rather early the afternoon +before, and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It was presumable +that he had been called suddenly out of town, and had sent some word to +Mrs. Alexander that had miscarried. + +That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who was evidently +disquieted, though bluffly and rather irritatingly making light of her +fears; he seemed to be both a little reluctant and a little +contemptuous. + +“My dear Mrs. Alexander, you can’t expect a fellow to be always tied to +his wife’s apron-strings! He doesn’t tell you everything. We like to +have a free foot once in a while. Why, my wife’s glad when I get off for +a day or two—coaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything +happening to Alexander—well, an able-bodied man can look out for +himself every time; there’s nothing in the world to be anxious about. +He’s meant to wire to you and forgotten to do it, that’s all—I forgot +it myself last year, when I was called away suddenly, but Myra didn’t +turn a hair; she knew I was all right. And if I were you, Mrs. +Alexander,—this is just a tip,—I wouldn’t go around telling _everyone_ +that he’s gone off and you don’t know where he is. It’s the kind of +thing folks get talking about in all kinds of ways; his affairs aren’t +in any too good shape, as he may have told you.” + +“Isn’t the business all right?” queried Lois, with a puzzled fear. + +“Oh, yes, of course—all right; but—I wouldn’t go around wondering +about his being away; he’s got his own reasons. You haven’t a telephone, +have you? I’ll send around word to have one put in to-day. I’ll tell you +what, I’ll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the +quiet—he’s got lots of wires he can pull. You won’t need me any more.” + +Leverich’s meeting with Dosia had been characterized on his part by a +show of brusque uninterest; he seemed to her indefinably lowered and +coarsened in some way—his cheeks sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant +admission that he must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. +And Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits +from him, caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her, she +ought not to let that fact be defaced, but everything connected with +that time seemed to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of +horror. All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an +undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women +tenfold greater when he was gone. + +Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had +seen him both times; he had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy, +and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for +details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs. +Alexander, but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day +he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly +nothing in Dosia’s quietly impersonal attitude to call it forth. Her +face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for +anyone to see—poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her woman’s +lesson of concealment. + +But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his +sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have +affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, and with a +hundred lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the +tortured wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of +his being entirely one with her in its absorption—of there being no +other interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justin’s return. +When Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be +set at rest; during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were +swept away, everything was on the right train, word would arrive from +Justin at once; and when he left, all was black and terrible again. + +The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these strange days when +mamma never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made +merry for them, and saw to the household, which was dependent on the +service of a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to put +her young arms around Lois and hold her close with aching pity. + +The suspense of these days had changed Lois terribly—her cheeks were +hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes looked twice their natural size, +with the black circles below them. Only the knowledge that her baby’s +welfare—perhaps his life—depended on her, kept her from giving way +entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack of croup, +which necessitated a visit from the doctor and further anxiety. Toward +afternoon of this third day a man came to put in the telephone, which +set them in touch with the unseen world. Girard’s voice over it later +had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate ending of the +mystery. + +Everything was excitement—delicacies were bought, in case Justin might +like them, Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best “to see +dear papa,” and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired +result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated +promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as soon as he +got in. + +Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in the suddenly +sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, at Girard’s word that nothing +more had been heard, as she was still looking up at him everything +turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little +spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head +pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard +leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and +contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as +if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion; she looked up at +Girard and tried to smile with piteous, brimming eyes. + +“Ah, don’t!” he said, with a quick gesture. His voice had an odd sound, +as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with it mingled also a compassionate +tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his +whole attitude as he bent over her. + +“You’re very good to be so sorry for me,” she whispered. + +He made a swift gesture of protest. “There’s one thing I can’t stand—to +see a woman suffer.” + +She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him +to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she +were trying to concentrate her mind: + +“You have known sorrow?” + +“Yes.” + +“Tell me.” + +He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of +another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both +spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn +to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there +in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped +loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere +beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a +spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. In such +moments as these she prayed for Lawson. + +“I”—it was Girard who spoke at last—“my mother—Cater said once that +he’d told you something about me.” + +“Yes, I remember.” + +“It’s hard to talk about it, yet sometimes I feel as if I’d like to. You +see, I was so little when we drifted off, she and I. I didn’t know how +to help, how to save her anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since +that I ought to have known—I ought to have known!” His hands clenched, +his voice had subsided to a groan. + +“You were her comfort when you least thought it,” said Lois. + +“Perhaps; I’ve always hoped so, in my saner moments. No matter how I +should try I could never tell anyone what that time was really like. It +seems now as if we were wandering for years, but I don’t suppose it was +for so very long. We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at +night, always trying to keep away from people, when—she thought we were +going back to our old home in the South, and that they would prevent +us.” He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that Ancient +Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a forbidden +subject, probe it to its haunting depths. “Did Cater tell you how she +died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in her arms +at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; +and I didn’t even have a pillow for her when she was dying; it’s one of +those things you can never make up for—that you can never change, no +matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to you when +you least expect it.” + +Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: “But the pain ended +in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to +know that you grieved.” + +“Yes, I believe that,” he acquiesced simply. “I’m glad you said it now. +I couldn’t rest until I got money enough to take her out of her pauper +grave and lay her by the side of her own people at home.” + +“And you have had a pretty hard time.” + +“Oh, that’s nothing!” He squared his shoulders with unconscious rebuttal +of sympathy. “When I was a kid, perhaps—but I get a lot of pleasure out +of life.” + +“But you must be lonely without anyone belonging to you,” said Lois, +trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. “Wouldn’t you be happier if +you were married?” + +He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a slight flush that +seemed to come from the embarrassment of some secret thought. The +action, and the change of expression, made him singularly charming. +“Possibly; but the chance of that is small. Women—that is, unmarried +women—don’t care for my society.” + +“Oh, oh!” protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as she looked at him, of +how much the reverse the truth must be. “But if you found the right +woman you might make her care for you.” + +He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray eyes. “No; there +you’re wrong. I’d never make any woman care for me, because I’d never +want to. If she couldn’t care for me without my _making_ her—! I’d have +to know, when I first looked at her, that she was _mine_. And if she +were not, if she did not care for me herself, I’d never want to make +her—never!” + +“Oh, oh!” protested Lois again, with interested amusement, shattered the +next instant as a fragile glass may be shattered by the blow of a +hammer. + +The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, closing the +intervening door behind him. The curtain of anxiety, lifted for +breathing-space for a moment, hung over them again somberly, like a +pall. Where was Justin? + +The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on Girard’s movements; +his low, murmuring voice told nothing. When he returned to where they +stood, his face was impassive. + +“Nothing new; I’m just going to town for a couple of hours, that’s all.” + +“Oh, must you leave us?” + +“I’m coming back, if you’ll let me.” He bent over Lois with that earnest +look which seemed somehow to insure protection. “I want you to let me +stay down-stairs here all night, if you will; I’m going to make +arrangements to get a special message through, no matter what time it +comes, and I’ll sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you and +Miss Linden can sleep.” + +“Oh, I’d be so glad to have you here! Redge has that croupy cough again. +But you can’t sit up,” said Lois. + +“Why not? It’s luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of +books around. I’ll be back in a couple of hours without fail.” + +A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could +have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he +gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, +who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the +typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated +man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a +decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his +body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of +being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely +at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and +handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating +himself. + +“Thank you very much,” said Lois. “This is the money, I suppose. I’m +sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself, I thought you +might send me a check.” + +Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. “That’s the +trouble, Mrs. Alexander, we can’t send any checks, Mr. Alexander is the +one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexander’s name. I went to Mr. +Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things, but +he doesn’t seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us +out easily enough if he wanted to. I—there’s no use keeping it back, +Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay +away. He ought to be home.” + +“Why, yes,” said Lois. + +“Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant +position.” Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his +gaze on the ground. “The business requires the most particular +management at the moment—the most particular. I—” He raised his eyes +with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that +this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth +by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the +daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at +Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she +did—knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better. + +He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: “Mrs. Alexander, your +husband and I have worked together for a year and a half now, with never +a word between us. I’m ready to swear by him any moment, if I’ve got him +to swear by. I’ll back him up in anything, no matter what, if it’s his +say-so—we’ve pulled through a good many tight places. But I can’t do it +alone; it’s madness to try. If he doesn’t show up, I’d better close the +place down at once.” + +“Why do you say this to me?” asked Lois, shrinking a little. + +“Why? because,—Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to mince words; if you +know where your husband is, for God’s sake, get word to him to come +back—every minute is precious. He may be ill—Heaven knows he had +enough to make him so; my wife knows the strain I’ve been through, she +says she wonders I’m alive,—but he can’t look after his health now. If +he’s on top of ground, he’s got to _come_. I’ve put every cent I own +into this business. I haven’t drawn my whole salary, even, for months. I +don’t know what reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustn’t +give out now.” + +“Mr. Harker!” cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, who had come +forward. “What does he mean?” + +“She doesn’t know where her husband is,” said the girl convincingly. Her +eyes and Mr. Harker’s met. The somber eagerness faded out of his; he +sighed and rose. + +“Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think I’ll hurry to catch +the next train; I haven’t been home to my dinner yet.” + +“Won’t you have something here before you go?” asked Lois. “It’s so +late.” + +“Oh, that’s nothing, I’m used to it,” returned Mr. Harker, with a pale +smile and the passive, self-effacing business manner as he departed, +while Lois went up-stairs once more. The baby cried, and she soothed +him, holding the warm little form close, closer to her—something +tangible before she put him down again to step back into this strange +void where Justin was not. + +For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the +existence of a world beyond her ken—a world that had been Justin’s. New +as the visitor’s words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of +herculean struggle; the way this man had looked—his wife had “wondered +that he was still alive.” And Justin—where was he now? _She_ had not +noticed, she had not wondered—until lately. + +Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her help, it was the one +thing now that kept her reason firm. She knew that she had not been all +unfaithful; sometimes he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she +was near. She had suffered, too, _she_ had longed for his help and +sympathy. No, she would not think of _that_; she would not! When two are +separated, one must love enough to bridge the gulf—what matter which +one? It seemed now as if there were so much that she might have given, +as if all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might have +been poured out and poured out at his feet—lavished on him, without +regard to need or fitness or expense, as Mary lavished her precious box +of spikenard on One she loved. Now that he was gone, there could be +nothing too hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to +have said to him. + +Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him hoarsely to be still; +and then, suddenly conscience-stricken and fearful at the slighting of +this other demand of love,—what awful reprisal might it not exact from +her?—she went to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy +that Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother would +stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the grinding and +destroying wheel of thought had her bound to it once more. + +He could not have left her of his own will! If he did not come, it would +be because he was dead—and then he could never know, never, never know. +There would be nothing left to her but the place where he had been. She +looked at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them for +the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and fell on her +knees, and went on them around the room, dragging herself from chair to +sofa, from sofa to bed,—these were the Stations of the Cross that she +was making,—with sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying +with them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the Almighty. +Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought of her; on this +table—here—and here—and here his head had lain. Her tears ceased; she +buried her face in the pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was, +in this world or another. For he was her husband—where he was she must +be, either in body or in spirit. + +The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice at the other +end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it seemed; withholding +information from any other. The doctor rang up, in response to an +earlier call, with directions for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been +laid down when the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the +ringing of bells! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO + + +This time, of course, the visitor was Mrs. Snow. In any exigency, any +mind- and body-absorbing event of life, the inopportune presence of Mrs. +Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came always as one of +those exasperating recurrences which bring with them a ridiculously +fresh irritation each time. It seemed to be the one extra thing you +couldn’t stand; in either trouble or joy she affected you like a +clinging, ankle-flapping mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to +Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the +greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those +passion-depths of darkness so that Mrs. Snow wouldn’t suspect anything. +She had an uncanny faculty of divining just what you didn’t want her to. + +Once before Lois had suspended tragedy for Mrs. Snow. The same things +happen to us over and over again daily in our crowded yet restricted +lives—it is we who change in our meeting with them. We have our great +passions, our great joys, our heartbreaks, no matter how small our +environment. + +“How do you do, my dear? Mr. Girard has just told me that he was going +to stay here to-night, in Mr. Alexander’s absence. He said little Redge +was threatened with the croup. Now, if I had only known that Mr. +Alexander was away, _I_ could have come and stayed with you!” + +“Oh, that wasn’t at all necessary,” said Lois hastily. “Thank you very +much. Do sit down, won’t you, Mrs. Snow?” + +“Only for a minute, then; I must go back to Bertha,” said Mrs. Snow, +seating herself and fumbling for something under her cloak. “I just came +over to read you a letter. It’s in my bag—I can’t seem to find it. +Well, perhaps I’d better rest for a minute.” Mrs. Snow’s face looked +unusually lined and set; in spite of her plaintiveness, her eyes had a +harassed glitter. + +“Isn’t it rather late for you to be out alone?” asked Lois. + +“Yes; Ada would have come around here with me, but she was expecting Mr. +Sutton. She was expecting him last night, but he didn’t come. If _I_ +were a young lady, I’d let a gentleman wait for _me_ the next time; it +used to be thought more attractive, in my day, but Ada’s so afraid of +not seeming cordial; gentlemen seem to be so sensitive nowadays! I said +to her, ‘Ada, when a man is enough at home in a house to kick the cat, +and ask for cake whenever he feels like it, I do _not_ see that it is +necessary to stand on ceremony with him.’ But Ada thinks differently.” + +“It is difficult to make rules,” said Lois vaguely. + +“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Snow. “As I was saying to Bertha, you don’t find a +young man like Mr. Girard so considerate of everyone—not that he’s so +_very_ young, either; I’m sure he often appears much older than he is. +It’s his manner—he has a manner like my dear father. He and Bertha have +long chats together; really, he is what _I_ would call quite attentive, +though she won’t hear of such a thing—but sometimes young men _do_ take +a great fancy for older girls. I had a friend who married a gentleman +twenty-seven years younger—he died soon afterwards. But many people +think nothing of a little difference of twelve or fifteen years. I said +to Bertha this morning, ‘Bertha, if you’d dress yourself a little +younger—if you’d only wear a blue bow in your hair.’ But no; I can’t +say anything nowadays to my own children without being flown at!” Mrs. +Snow’s voice trembled. “If my darling William were here!” + +“Have you heard from William lately?” asked Lois, with supreme effort. + +“My dear, he’s in Chicago. I came over to read you a letter from him +that I got to-night. That new postman left it at the Scovels’, by +mistake, and they never sent it over until a little while ago. There was +a sentence in it,” Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, “that I thought +you’d like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. ‘Next month I hope to be +able to send you more’—no, no, that’s not it. ‘When my socks get holes +in them I throw them’—that’s not it, either. Oh! he says, ‘I caught a +glimpse of Mr. Alexander last night, getting on a West Side car’—this +was written yesterday morning. ‘I called to him, but too late. I’m +sorry, for I’d like to have seen him.’ That’s all, but Mr. Girard seemed +so pleased with the letter, I promised that I would bring it around to +you that very minute,—_he_ had to run for the train,—but I was +detained. He thought you’d like to hear that William had seen Mr. +Alexander.” + +Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois faint. Yet, after +Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions began to repeat themselves +again. Justin was alive—Justin was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive +now? And why had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no word? +The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. Every fear that +imagination could devise seemed to center around this new fact. + +She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little drawing-room, +making it ready for Girard’s occupancy—pulling out a big chair for his +use, and putting fresh books on the table. The maid had long ago gone to +bed, and there was coffee to be made for him—he might get hungry in the +night. When he came in at last, he brought all the brightness and +courage of hope with him; he had wired to William, he had phoned to a +dozen different places in Chicago. + +“Oh, what should we do without you?” breathed Lois, her foot on the +stairway. + +“It doesn’t seem to me I’ve helped you very much so far, our one clue +has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. +Alexander; take all the rest you can. I’m here to do the watching. If +there’s anything really to tell, I’ll call you, I promise faithfully. +What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me?” + +“There was a message for you while you were gone,” said Dosia in a low +tone. + +His eyes assented. “Yes, I went there—to the place that they—but it +wasn’t Alexander, I’m glad to say, though I was afraid when I went +in——” + +“I know,” said Dosia. + +Another strange night had begun, with the master of the house away. Lois +went to her room to lie down clothed, jumping up to come to the head of +the stairs whenever the telephone-bell rang, and then going back again +when she found that those who were consulting were asking for +information instead of giving it, but by and by the messages ceased. + +Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that he had been gone +for years, and tried confusedly to plan out the future. There were the +children—how should she support them? She must support them. It was +hard to get work when you had a baby. If she hadn’t the baby—no one +should take the baby from her! She clasped him to her for a moment in +terror, as if she were being hunted, before she grew calm and began +planning again. There was only a little money left—to-morrow they must +still eat. She must make the money last. + +Dosia, on the bed by Redge’s crib, went softly after a while into the +other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could +not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, +so far removed was he from her dream of him; through all his softness, +his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else +did—though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too—that +the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up +from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening +streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of +divination, that in spite of all his strong, capable dealing with +actualities and his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of +his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theory—theory +that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry +for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to +her. + +Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired +eyes wide open, close to Redge’s crib, with his little hot hand clinging +to hers, the mere fact of Girard’s bodily presence in the house, +down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldn’t get +away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it +called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with +Lawson—unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. +This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not +to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She +tried to lose it in the thought of Lois’ great trouble, of this +weighting, pitiful mystery of Justin’s absence—of what it meant to him +and to the household; she tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, +with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing +availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness +of Girard’s bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so +that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice +spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly: + +“Dosia?” + +“Yes, Lois, dearest, I’m here.” + +“Has any word come from Justin?” + +“No.” + +Lois shivered. “I think, when Redge wakes up next, you’d better give him +a drink of water, he sounds so hoarse. I’ve used all I brought up. Do +you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I can’t +slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher.” + +“Yes,” said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly +over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall. + +It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. Dosia went down +the low, wide stairs with that indescribable air of the watcher in the +night. Her white cotton gown, the same that she had worn throughout the +afternoon, had lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted +folds; the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white +necktie was half untied. One cheek was warm where it had pressed the +pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half loosened, hung against +it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a rayed starriness, the pupils +contracted from the sudden light—her expression, tired and half +bewildered, had in it somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in +the unwonted middle of the night, who might go naturally and comfortably +into any kind arms held out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her +fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat +leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on +the arm of it and his head on his hand; the books and bric-à-brac on the +table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray +containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some +biscuits; a newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the +light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect +which belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, when the +very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment from the life +of the day. Yet, in the midst of this night silence, this withdrawing of +the ordinary vital forces, the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be +extraordinarily instinct with vitality, even in that second before he +moved; his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with such +intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, as instantly +arresting, as the blast of a trumpet. + +At the sound of Dosia’s light oncoming step opposite the door, he rose +at once, and with a quick stride stood beside her. He seemed tall and +unexpectedly dazzling as he confronted her; his deep set gray eyes were +very brilliant. + +“What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill?” + +“No—oh, no; the children have been restless, that is all,” said Dosia, +recovering, with annoyed self-possession, from a momentary shock, and +feeling disagreeably conscious of looking tumbled and forlorn. “I came +down to get a pitcher of water.” + +“Can’t I get it in the dining-room for you?” he asked, with formal +politeness. + +“Thank you. The water isn’t running in the butler’s pantry, I have to go +in the kitchen for it. If you would light the gas there for me——” + +“Yes, certainly,” he responded promptly, pushing the portières aside to +make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light +the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed +floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in +which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as +of the deep darkness of the night outside around everything. + +A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a chair by the +chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its yellow eyes toward the +two intruders. + +“Let me fill this,” said Girard, taking the pitcher from her—a rather +large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted vine for a handle—and +carrying it over to the faucet. The intimacy of the hour and the scene +emphasized the more the punctilious aloofness of this enforced +companionship. + +Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the water run, that it +might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a +drumhead. The moment—it was hardly more—seemed interminable to Dosia. +The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, +and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways that +her cheek might touch him in recognition. Some inner thought claimed +her, to the exclusion of the present; her eyes, looking dreamily before +her, took on that expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably +sweet. + +Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident that to +caress, to _touch_ her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of +any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair, +the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet +rounded form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as +inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with +always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated, +ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse +to come. + +The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She +raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color +flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was +nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came +toward her with the pitcher. + +“I’ll take it now, please,” she said hurriedly. + +“Won’t you let me carry it up for you?” + +“Thank you, it isn’t necessary. I’ll go along, if you’ll wait and turn +out the light.” + +“Very well. You’re sure it’s not too heavy for you?” he asked anxiously, +as her wrists bent a little with the weight. + +“Oh, no, indeed,” said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the +white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself +against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly. + +“Take care!” cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight +hold of it. + +Their hands touched—for the first time since the night of disaster, the +night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a +crash—the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water +streaming over it in rivulets. + +“Dosia!” called the frightened voice of Lois from above. + +“Yes, I’m coming,” Dosia called back. “There’s nothing the matter!” She +had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, +snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she +passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace +with her beating heart. + +When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the +tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago. + +[Illustration: _He came toward her with the pitcher_] + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE + + +Justin was in Chicago,—the fact was verified, and he would start for +home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting +one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate +relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon +her, all the more clingingly each time, not to be fully dissipated, +after all, until Justin’s bodily return. + +Girard had gone back very early to the Snows’ to breakfast. He talked to +Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, +wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went +about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night +before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something +else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; once—so far away that +night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that +protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange +resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude +to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately +revered, and which other men had not always used toward her. + +“Oh, he’s _good_, he’s good!” she whispered to herself, with the tears +blinding her, as she picked up Redge’s blocks from the floor. She felt +Lawson’s kisses on her lips, her throat—that cross of shame that she +held always close to her; George Sutton’s fat face thrust itself +leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to +which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can +feel! Yet the sense of Girard’s presence before was as nothing to her +sense of it now—it blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in +the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the quiet attitude +filled intensely with life; the turn of his head, the shape of his hand, +were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, +long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked pale and inert, it +was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was +worn out with it. + +Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare +word that he had started home. Lois was not expecting him until nine +o’clock on the second morning, the early trains from town were coming +out at inconvenient intervals, but just as Lois had finished dressing, +she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for +fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again. + +Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she +entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. “Justin!” + +He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for +a moment, and then said, “You’d better sit down.” + +“But, Justin—oh, my dearest, how ill you look!” She clung to him. +“Where have you been? Why didn’t you send me any word?” + +“I’ve been to Chicago.” + +“Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?” + +“I don’t know.” + +“You don’t _know_?” + +“Lois, will you give me some coffee?” + +She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat while he took a +swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the newspaper. At last she +said: + +“Aren’t you going to tell me any more?” + +“There isn’t any more to tell. There’s no use talking about it. I +believe I had some idea of selling the island when I went to Chicago, +but I don’t know how I got there. I didn’t know I was there until I woke +up two nights ago at a little hotel away out on the West Side; Billy +pounded on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for +twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I don’t want to +speak of it again, Lois; it wasn’t a particularly pleasant thing to +happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in the rest of the breakfast? I must +catch the eight-thirty train back into town. I ought to have stopped +there, but I thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where +are the children?” + +“They are coming down now with Dosia,” said his wife, helping Mary with +the dishes, as the patter of little feet sounded in the hall. Redge ran +up to his father, hitting him jubilantly with a small stick which he +held in his chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon him at +once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted over her little +white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched for her, and stood there +leaning against “Daddy’s” side, while he ate and drank hurriedly, with +only one hand at his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of +jealousy at being shut out, but she heroically smothered the feeling. + +“Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money,” +she ventured at last. + +“That was all right.” + +“And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that night—until your +message came.” + +“I hope you haven’t been talking about this all over the place.” + +“No—oh, no,” said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless +injury. “Mr. Leverich—he was here one morning—said it was best not to. +He was rather unpleasant, though. But nobody knows about your being away +at all. You’re not going now, Justin—without even seeing baby?” + +“I’ll see him to-night when I come home,” said Justin, rising. He kissed +the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, +standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the +hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something +else. + +“Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for,” she said. + +“Yes, thank you.” He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing +her for the first time, with a whispered “Poor girl!” That momentary +close embrace brought her a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. +She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly +thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond. + +But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had +been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with +Justin’s return, but it had not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it +seemed to have just begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never +to hear any more? + +That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor—William +Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William’s, but he had an +indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his +clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, +shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was +talking to Lois—his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear +out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight +as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands to cry, +“Oh, Billy, Billy, I’m so glad to see you! I am so glad—I can’t tell +you how glad I am!” + +“All right, Sweetness, you’re not going to lose me again,” said William +encouragingly. “My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western +girls. Can’t we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to +marry me before we talk any more.” + +“Yes, do,” said Dosia, dimpling. + +It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take +refuge from all disconcerting thoughts—and from the new embarrassment +of Girard’s presence—with Billy in the corner of the other room, where +she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of +her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the +gloom. + +“Oh, but you’ve grown pretty!” he said, his hands clasped over his +knees, gazing at her. “That’s right, get pink—it makes you prettier. I +like this slimpsy sort of dress you’ve got on; I like that black velvet +around your throat; I—have you missed me much?” + +“No,” said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. “I’ve hardly thought of you +at all. But I feel now as if I had.” + +Billy nodded. “All right, I’ll pay you up for that some day. Oh, Dosia, +you may think I’m joking, but I’m not! There have been days and nights +when I’ve done nothing but plan the things I was going to do and say to +make you care for me—but they’re all gone the moment I lay eyes on you. +I’ll talk of whatever you like afterwards, but I’ve got to say +first,”—Billy’s voice, deep and manly and confident, had yet a little +shake in it,—“that nobody is going to marry you but me, and don’t you +forget it. I’m no kid any more.” Something in his tone gave his words +emphasis. “I know how to look out for you better than anyone else does.” + +“Dear Billy,” said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek momentarily +against the rough sleeve of his coat, “it’s so good to have you back +again.” + +“I’m no kid any more,” said William warningly. + +Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening to come, so +that she could be alone with her husband, sat in the drawing-room, +trying to sew with nervous, trembling fingers, while her husband, +looking frightfully tired, and Bailey Girard smoked and talked—of all +things in the world!—of the relative merits of live bait or “spoon” +bait in trolling, and afterwards went minutely into details of the +manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout. + +Those waste “social” hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, that must +be lived through before one can get to the place just ahead of them—how +long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois’ face twitched, as well +as her fingers; Girard’s voice, lucidly expressionless, went on and on +in reminiscent detail, and Justin, looking frightfully tired, but +apparently deeply interested, remembered and remembered the day they +caught this, and the way they landed that and, with exasperating +monotony, drew diagrams corroboratingly with two fingers on the table +beside him. She did not realize, as women do not, that to Justin this +conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or +his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at +a necessary air-hole. + +After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing +but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, +but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He +had thought, from Justin’s manner to-day, that he was to know something +of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him, that was +all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of +his business, anyway. + +Suddenly a word in the fishing conversation caught the ears of the two +who were sitting in the dining-room, in a momentary pause. + +“That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the +Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he’s dead.” + +Lawson! Dosia’s face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and +then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little +nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her. + +“Hadn’t you heard before?” + +“No; what?” + +“He’s dead.” + +“Lawson _dead_! Not Lawson?” Her dry lips illy formed the words. + +“Yes, Dosia—don’t look like that—don’t let them see in there, Girard +is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up +to-night. Lawson died a week ago.” + +“How?” + +“Fell from his horse somewhere up in a cañon—he was drunk, I reckon. +They found him twenty-four hours afterwards; the superintendent of the +mines wrote to Leverich. He’d tried to keep pretty straight out there, +all but the drinking, I guess that was too much for him. It was the best +thing he could do—to die—as Girard says. Girard hates the very sound +of his name.” + +“Oh,” breathed Dosia painfully. + +“The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, +and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the +superintendent’s letter to say that she’d ‘miss Mr. Barr dreadful,—that +he’d get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and the kids, they +thought the world of him.’ She signed herself, ‘A true mourner, Mrs. +Wilson.’” + +Lawson was dead! + +Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billy’s sleeve as at first—something +tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had gone far beyond the room, even that +haunting knowledge that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden +subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a dead +body—Lawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, caressing eyes, those +curving, passionate lips, closed forever, the blood oozing from between +his dark locks. Always she had secretly visioned some distant day when, +Lucile-like, she might be near him, helping, though he would not know it +until he lay dying. As ever with poor Dosia, there was that sharp, +unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. Of what avail +her prayers, her belief in him, when he had died thus? Oh, she had not +prayed enough! She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she +had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just a little—he +had “tried to keep pretty straight, all but the drinking; that was too +much for him.” + +That covered some resistance in an under-world of which she knew +nothing. Poor Lawson, who had so early lost his chance, whose youth had +been poisoned at the start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and +reveler, part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,—once his promised +wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,—must always lie too, +buried with him; nothing could undo that. To die so causelessly! But the +miners had “chipped in” for a resting-place for him—they had cared a +little; he had been kind to a woman and her little children—“the kids +had thought the world of him”; she was “a true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.” +Dosia imagined him cheeringly cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, +carrying the children from place to place as she had once seen him carry +that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago. + +A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, carrying her to +the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid rehabilitation of the strong, +except in that one moment of denial when he had risen by the might of +his manhood in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues of his +weakness could be his—yet perhaps, in the sight of the God Who pities, +no such small offering, after all! + +“Dosia, you didn’t really _care_ for him!” + +She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyes—an enigmatic answer which +Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, +until she got up, and, whispering, “I must go,” left the room, +unconscious of Girard’s following gaze. + +“I think we’d better be getting back,” said the latter suddenly, in an +odd voice, rising in the middle of one of Justin’s sentences as Billy +came straying in to join the group. + +Lois’ heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of live bait and +reminiscences would be more than she could stand. + +“You need some rest,” she said gratefully. “You have been tired out in +our service.” + +“Oh, I’m not tired at all,” he returned shortly. Her work seemed to +catch his eye for the first time, in a desire to change the subject. +“What are you making?” + +“A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt left out—he’s of +a very jealous disposition,” she went on abstractedly. “Are you of a +jealous disposition, Mr. Girard?” + +“I!” He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking +account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as +if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt +decision: “Yes, I am.” + +“Don’t look so like a pirate,” said young Billy, giving him a thump on +the back that sent them both out of the house, laughing, when Lois rose +and went over to Justin’s side. + +Husband and wife were at last alone. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR + + +In the days that followed, Justin, going away in the morning very early +with a set face, coming home very late in the evening with that set face +still, hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia. Some tremulous +change had affected Dosia; her eyelashes were often mysteriously wet, +though no one saw her weep. + +“Justin has so much on his mind.” Lois kept repeating the words over and +over, as if she found in them something by which to hold fast. Rich in +beauty as she was, full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and +the pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have no eyes, no +thought for her. That one murmured sentence in the hallway was all her +food to live on—his only personal recognition of her. + +On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his plans to her with a +freedom of confidence unknown before, a confidence which seemed to +presuppose her oneness of interest with him. He had talked exhaustively +about everything but those few days’ absence; that was a sore that she +must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. She had striven very +hard not to show when she didn’t understand, taking her cues for assent +or dissent as he evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, as it +seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The only time +when she broke in on her own account was when he had told her about +Cater, and the defective bars, and Leverich’s ultimatum. Here was an +issue that she could comprehend; here her woman’s instinct rang true. A +man may juggle with that fluctuating line where sharp practice and +honest shrewdness meet, so that he fails to see where one begins and +another ends; but a woman of Lois’ caliber _knows_. Her “Justin, you +wouldn’t do that; you wouldn’t tell!” met with his quick response: “No, +I couldn’t.” + +“Oh, I know that, I know that! I’m glad, whatever comes, that you +couldn’t do it. I’d rather be a hundred times poorer than we are! Aren’t +you glad that you couldn’t do it?” + +“No; I think I’m rather sorry,” said Justin, with a half-smile. The +peculiar sharpness of the thought that it was between Cater and +Leverich—his friends, Heaven save the mark! that he was being pushed +toward ruin, had not lost any of its edge. + +There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater’s mind toward +Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an +older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has +come along the same way. Cater’s kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the +fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the +factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. + +Justin was surprised to find out how much the morning greeting with +Cater, or the occasional lunch-hour together, had meant to him. Cater +and he had mutually understood a great many things. Cater had done +nothing wrong now, except to pull the foothold from under his friend’s +feet. It was not men who were known to be bad who hurt you when they +were dishonest; it was the _good_ men who slid over that dividing-line, +with apparent unconsciousness that they were on that other, shaming +side. To break an unwritten bond is perhaps worse than to break one +printed and scheduled, because it presupposes a greater faith and trust. +Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn’t smile when he +thought of Cater—it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had +been his friend. + +“I am glad that you couldn’t do it anyway!” said Lois. “It wouldn’t have +been you if you had! Can’t you take a rest now, dear, when _you_ look so +ill? No, no; I didn’t mean that—of course you can’t!” + +“A _rest!_” He rose and walked up and down the room. “Lois, do you know +that, in some way, I’ve got to get that money before the thirteenth? +Those days in Chicago—at the worst time! It makes me wild to think of +the time I’ve lost. I’m looking out for a partner who will buy out +Leverich and Martin, and we’ve got a chance yet—I’ll swear we have! But +Lewiston’s note has got to be paid first; then I can take time to +breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston from whom we might have borrowed +the money, if I had only been here. If we get that we can hold over; if +we don’t we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewiston _trusted_ me. +I’ve been to several places to-day to men that would be willing enough +to lend the money if they didn’t know I needed it.” + +“George Sutton?” hazarded Lois. + +Justin’s lips curved bitterly. “Oh, he’s a cur. He had some money +invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, and drew it all out +afterwards! And, after all, I went to him to-day, like a fool!” + +“Can’t you go to Eugene Larue?” + +“No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he didn’t think the +security enough. If he thought so then, it would be worse than useless +now.” + +“Mr. Girard?” + +“There’s no use telling things to him, he hasn’t any money.” Justin +turned a dim eye on her. “I tell you, Lois, I haven’t left a stone +unturned so far, that I could get at. If we could only sell the island! +Girard’s looking it up for me; there may be a chance of that. There are +lots of chances to be thought out. I don’t even know how we keep +running, but we do. Harker’s a trump! If I can hold up my end, we’ll be +all right.” + +“Then go to bed now,” said Lois, with a quick dread that gave her +courage. “And you must have something to eat first—and to drink, too. +Come, Justin! Do as I say.” Her voice had a new firmness in it which he +unconsciously obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in every +limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her one darling comfort, +the source from which she drew a new love as the child drew its life +from her. It was the first time in all her married life that she had +borne the burden of her husband’s care, a burden from which she must +seek no solace from him. Yet the thought of him was in itself +solace—her faith in him so strong that she simply knew he must succeed. +A king of men! If only he did not look so badly! + +She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping him well fed, and +ordering everything minutely for his comfort when he came home, aided +and abetted by Dosia. The two women worked as with one thought between +them, as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, with fond +and minute care. Every detail, from the time he went away in the +morning, stooping slightly under the weight of something mysterious and +unseen, was ordered with reference to his homecoming at night—the +husband and father on whose strength all this helpless little family +hung for their own sustenance. The children were shown him at their +best, and whisked away the moment they got troublesome. + +Lois dressed herself in the colors he had liked. The cloth was laid +immaculately for dinner, although the maid had gone and had not been +replaced, and dainty dishes for him were concocted with delicate +care—the more care, that every penny had to be counted; when Justin +took out that lean pocket-book to give her money, Lois winced. If he +seemed to relish anything he ate, she and Dosia looked at each other +with covert triumph. + +Everything that was done for him had to be done covertly, it was found; +he disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes +he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost +heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the +doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and rest—a futile +prescription which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that +it was not rest that he needed, but money—money, money, the elixir of +life! He looked drawn and haggard and old, despite his nervous energy, +but a sufficient quantity of that magic metal would smooth out those +premature wrinkles, and round out those hollow checks, and give a +cheerful brightness to his eye, and take ten years from his age. + +Both women came to know the days when the prospects for selling the +island looked well or ill, with those telegrams of Girard’s. Lois poured +out her heart about him to Dosia, her minute anxieties and fears. + +William came around several times to see Dosia—his visit almost +invariably followed by one from Mrs. Snow, to see if her William were +there. For the rest, there were few callers. + +It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could +see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an +invitation to take a ride in the doctor’s motor, the doctor being a man +who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented +himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy +speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to +the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed +out of it. + +Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he +had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such +strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it +discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it +after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong +with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed +to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite +straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there +were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice— Yet it +might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong—that +he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again +on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down, to get the +baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. +Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to +her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of +his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence. + +Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, +for fear of waking the baby, in his quest for a handkerchief in a +chiffonier drawer. After finding it, he stopped for a moment in front of +her, with that odd, arrested expression once more. + +“You don’t mind my going out to-night and leaving you?” he murmured. +“The doctor ought to have asked _you_ to go instead; you need it more +than I.” + +“Oh, no, no!” she hastened to reassure. “I don’t mind at all, really!” +Her eyes gazed up at him limpidly clear, and emptied of self. “I have to +run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldn’t go, no +matter how much I was asked to. I’m only glad that you will have the +distraction—you need it. I hope you’ll have a lovely time.” + +She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two +arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib. From across the hall +she could hear Redge and Zaidee prattling to each other from their beds +with an elfish glee that began to have long waits between its outbursts. + +In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little +discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her +tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and +straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of +mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a +tiny cloak in the half-gloom of her closet, when she heard her husband’s +step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him +beside her. + +“What’s the matter?” she asked, with quick premonition. + +“Nothing, nothing at all; we haven’t started yet.” He put one arm around +her, and with the other lifted her face up toward his. “I only came back +to tell you—“His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes +that were bent on hers. “I can’t talk. I can’t be as I ought to be, +Lois, until all this is over—but—I don’t know what’s getting into me +lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can’t take my eyes off you! I +went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it +was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away +from my lovely wife.”% + +Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than +our easily imagined bliss that we can only hide our eyes from it at +first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place +they were visited by angels. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE + + +Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an +absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she +could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately—the more +tired she was the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was +like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial +things became unnaturally distinct. So many wakeful nights had she +passed that one seemed to presuppose another, darkness brought, not a +sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there +staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher +had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her +something that it never brought. Lawson’s death—Girard—Billy, who was +getting a little troublesome lately—the dear little brothers far away, +mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and +through her mind. Her heart was wrung for those two in the house, Justin +and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and +support Dosia; they had had their day. Prayer but wakened her further, +wandering off in desultory thought. If she could only sleep and forget! + +To-night she heard Justin’s return from the automobile ride; apparently +the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added +to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard +came—he had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the +murmuring of the voices down-stairs—Girard’s sent the blood leaping to +her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment +his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hers—her heart stopped +before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an +unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear +him, and that she could not. Why, oh why, had she gone to bed so early +to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a +disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing +and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could +imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, +smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a +few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its +chains. She couldn’t get dressed and break in upon their intimate +conference—or it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably +go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no +longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there +desolately on the top step, “in her long night-gown, white as boughs of +May,” with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands +clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching +and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into +large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to +listen—and to listen—and to listen. + +“I want to be there, too—I want to be there, too!” she whispered, with +quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. +“I want to be there, too. They’re having it all—without me. And I want +to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they +didn’t.” They might have called her! All her passion, all her +philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had +only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have +dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer. + +After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, +and a little figure crept out—Zaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, +looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and +climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly +against Dosia’s warm young shoulder. + +“They woke me up,” she said placidly. “Did they woke you up, too, Cousin +Dosia?” + +“Yes,” said Dosia, hugging the child close. Some spell was broken. + +Zaidee listened. “Papa and mamma talking down-stairs, oh, so-o-o-o +late!” Zaidee gave a little wriggle of delight; her eyes gleamed +winkingly. “Redge doesn’t know, but I do! Who is that with papa and +mamma, Cousin Dosia? Oh, I know! it’s the lovely man—that’s what Redge +and me calls him. I wish I was down-stairs, don’t you? Cousin Dosia, +don’t you wish you were down-stairs?” + +“Yes,” said Dosia again. “Hush! some one is coming; you’ll get sent to +bed again.” This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in +the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course. + +[Illustration: _Sat desolately on the top step_] + +“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said. “I thought I heard some one talking.” +She rested on the post below, looking up. “I came to see if you’d take +Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give +Justin’s room to Mr. Girard.” + +“Is he going to stay?” asked Dosia. + +“Yes. It’s too late for him to disturb the Snows, and he’s been +traveling all day; he’s dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa +down-stairs, but I wouldn’t let him.” She was carrying Zaidee, already +half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia’s +bed, while Dosia followed her. + +“Did he sell the island?” asked Dosia. + +Lois shook her head. “No. They may really sell it next week, but not +now— The woman who was surely going to buy it—she’s withdrawn; she’s +bought a steam-yacht instead. But Mr. Girard says he has hopes of +another purchaser next week. Only that will be too late to save the +business. Of course he doesn’t know that, and Justin will not tell +him—he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from +that ride he looked so well, and now—” She covered her face with her +hands, before recovering herself. “It’s time you were both asleep.” + +“Can’t I help you?” asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, +“No, it’s not necessary,” and went around making arrangements, while +Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last. + +It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had +breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, +who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the +vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, +imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen +in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that +made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girard’s +glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to +greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand. + +“Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped.” + +“It’s half-past nine,” said Dosia. + +“Half-past _nine!_” He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified +arraignment. “What do you mean?” His eye fell upon the clock, and +conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. “Heavens and +earth, why wasn’t I called? On this morning of all others, when every +moment’s of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked +early.” + +“I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest,” apologized +Dosia. + +“Needed the rest!” His tone was poignant; he looked outraged, but his +anger was entirely impersonal—there was in it even a sort of boyish +appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too. + +“You had better sit down and have some breakfast.” + +“Oh, _breakfast!_” His gesture deprecated her evident intention. “Please +don’t. Thank you very much, but I don’t want any breakfast; I only want +to get to town.” + +“There isn’t any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit +down and eat,” said Dosia firmly. “Come out to this little table on the +piazza.” She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with +the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him +sternly. “Do you take coffee?” + +“Please don’t, please don’t cook me anything! I’d hate to trouble you.” +He seemed so distressed that she relented a little. + +“A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you’ll _have_ to take that.” + +“Very well—if I must. Can’t I get the things myself?” + +“No.” She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her +heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a +glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down +herself by the table afterwards as he ate and drank. He gave her a +sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her +cheeks. + +“I’m not used to this,” he said simply. “What is that dress you have +on—silk?” + +“No, it’s cotton; do you like it?” + +“_Very_ much. Oh, please don’t get up—Zaidee wasn’t calling you. I +won’t eat another mouthful unless you stay just where you are—please!” + +“Well!” said Dosia, with laughing pleasure. + +“Besides, I’ve been wanting to consult you about the Alexanders,” he +went on, leaning across the table toward her, intimately. “It’s so +beautiful to me to see them together that to feel that they’re in +trouble distresses me beyond words. You’re so near to them both I +thought that perhaps—— Do you know anything about the real state of +Mr. Alexander’s affairs?” + +Dosia shook her head. “No; only that he is very much worried over them.” + +“He wanted to sell the island; he sent me off on that business lately. +He’ll sell it some time, of course, but I don’t know how complicating +the delay is. He’s the kind of man you can’t ask; you have to wait until +he tells you. You can’t _make_ a person have confidence in you. Won’t +you please have some of these strawberries with me? Do!” + +“No; you must eat them _all_,” said Dosia, with charming authority, her +arms before her on the table, elbow-sleeved, white and dimpled, as she +regarded him. He seemed to take up all the corner, against the +background of the green honeysuckle in the fresh morning light. With +that smile upon his face, he seemed extraordinarily masculine and +absorbing, yet appealing, too, inviting of confidence. + +Dosia felt carried out of herself by a sudden heady resolution—or, +rather, not a new resolution, but one that she had had in mind for a +long, long time, before, oh, before she had even known who this man was. +She had planned over and over again how she was to say those words, and +now the time had come. She could not sit here with him in this new, +sweet friendliness without saying them. She had imagined the scene in so +many different ways! When she had gone over it by herself, her cheeks +had flushed, her eyes had shone with the tears in them; the words as she +spoke them had gone deeply, convincingly, from heart to heart—or +perhaps, in an assumed, tremulous lightness, the meaning in her impulse +had shown all the clearer to one who understood. For a year and a half +the uttered thought had been the climax to which her dreams had led; it +would have seemed a monstrous, impossible thing that it had not been +reached before. + +She began now in a moment’s pause, only to find, too late, that all +warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent +dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and +conscious in real life. + +“I want to thank you for being so kind to me the night of that accident +on the train coming up from the South.” Poor Dosia instantly felt +committed to a mistake. Her eyes fell for a moment on his hand, as it +lay upon the table, with a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers +had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once +pillowed her cheek upon it, and knew that he had seen the look; she +continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality: +“I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for +not thanking you before.” + +The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him as if in remembrance +of something that hurt. “Oh, pray don’t mention it,” he said, with a +formality that matched hers. “It was nothing but what anyone would have +done—little enough, anyway.” + +What happened afterwards she did not know, except that in a few minutes +he had gone. + +She watched him go off down the path with that swift, long, easy step; +watched till the last vestige of the gray suit was out of sight—he had +a fashion of wearing gray!—before clearing off the table. Then she went +and sat on the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with +the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet. Justin was fond of +flowers. + +Much has been written about the power of the mind to reproduce minute +details of a scene that has served as the setting for some great +emotion; the pattern of a table-cover or a rug, the flowers in a vase, +the titles of the books, the strain of music being played in the next +room—all stand out, separate and distinct, indelibly imprinted upon the +memory. There is another variety of the same phenomena, seldom commented +on, where an entirely unreal impression of the scene as a whole is left +on the mind by one or two details. To Dosia, sitting there by the little +plot of tulips, the sun was the brilliant sun of July, and those scarlet +tulips a garden wide and far-reaching, an endless vista of flowers, the +blue sky an endless vault above her—high noon and midsummer, with that +sweet-scented warmth at the busy heart of things, a circle of infinite +life humming in the low grasses, in the almost windless, hardly stirring +air. Warmth and color and life, at high noon, listening close to the +heart of things. + +And Dosia! She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man +until he had shown that he cared for her—it was the unmaidenly, +impossible thing. And now—how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful +smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men +suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself +made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more +in her whole life, she had this—even if she never had anything more. +Yet what had she? Nothing and less than nothing. If he had ever thought +of her, if he had ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand +trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had +been a sign and a symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him +alone—if in some way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once +been his, it had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and +yet—so unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her +attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which +he might never give way, but it was unalterably there—as it was +unalterably there with her. All that year at home, when she believed she +had not been thinking of him, she really had been thinking of him. We +learn to know each other sometimes in long absences. She began to +perceive in him now a humility and a pride strangely at variance with +each other, and both equally at variance with the bright assurance of +his outer manner. He gave to everyone; he would work early and late for +others, in his yearning sympathy and affection: yet he himself, from the +very intenseness of his desire for it, stood aloof, and drew back from +the insistence of any claim for himself. They might meet a hundred times +and grow no closer; they might grow farther and farther away. + +Dosia felt that other women must have loved him—how could they have +helped it? She had a pang of sorrow for them—for herself it made no +difference. If she had pain for all her life afterwards, she was glad at +this moment that he was worthy to be loved; she need never be ashamed of +loving him—he was “good.” The word seemed to contain some beautiful +comfort and uplifting. No matter what experience he had passed through +in his struggle with the world, he had held some simple, honorable, +_clean_ quality intact. The Dosia who must always have some heart-warm +dream to live by had it now; for all her life she could love him, pray +for him. She had always thought that to love was to be happy; now she +was to love and be unhappy—yet she would not have it otherwise. + +So slight, so young, so lightly dealt with, Dosia had the pathetically +clear insight and the power that comes to those who see, not themselves +alone, their own desires and hopes, but the universe in which they +stand, and view their acts and thoughts in relation to it. She must see +Truth, “and be glad, even if it hurt.” + +The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed in it. Whether +she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness and days of heartache +afterwards, this joy of loving was enough for her to-day—the joy of +loving him. She saw, in that lovely, brooding thought of him, what that +first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in with it her +knowledge of him now, to make the real man far more imperfect, though +far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved her as she loved him, part of that for +which she had always sought love would have to be foregone—she could +never come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and pour out to +him all those hopes and fears, those struggles and mistakes and trials +and indignities, the shame and the penitence that had been hers. She +could never talk of Lawson—her past must be forever unshriven and +uncomforted. Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she +could bare her heart in confession; these were the things that touched +him on the raw. He “hated the sound of Lawson’s name.” How many times +had George Sutton’s face blotted out hers? If he knew _that_! She must +forever be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that _she_ +could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that it never can be +truly one with the beloved, touched her with its sadness, and then +slipped away in the thought of him now—not just the man who was to help +and protect her with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. +His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his forehead—— +She thought of him with the fond dream-passion of the maiden, that is +often the shyest thing on earth, ready to veil itself and turn and elude +and hide at the first chance that it may be revealed. + +“Dosia! Dosia, where are you?” + +Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the sky had grown +gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the trouble, all the stress of the +world, seemed to encompass her with that tone in the voice of Lois. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX + + +“Justin has come home ill, he was taken with a chill as soon as he got +to town; he drove back in a carriage from the station. I want you to +telephone for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can.” +Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up +the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one +who mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what +may be happening. “And, Dosia!” she arrested the girl as she was +disappearing, “I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what +we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the +children. They’re in the nursery now, but I’ll send them down; they had +better play outdoors, where he won’t hear them.” + +“Oh, yes, yes; I’ll attend to everything,” affirmed Dosia hurriedly, +while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home +because he is not well argues at once the most serious need for the act. +It is the public crossing of the danger zone. + +With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of +something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of +Justin’s illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness +of her eyes, in the fullness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement +of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery +force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke +of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the +commonplace surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only +Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken +eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to +make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would +go off together—anything to make him forget, even though the effort +left her breathless afterwards. When she went out of the room and came +back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been, +with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on +the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the +more quickly to go down-town again if the doctor “fixed him up,” though +now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones. + +There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which +might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr. +Angevin L. Cater. + +“I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and +as I had to come out this way on business, I thought I’d just drop in +and see if there was anything I could do for him in town,” he stated to +Dosia. + +“I’ll find out,” said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word +that Justin would like to see the visitor. + +Cater himself had grown extraordinarily lean and yellow. The fact that +his clothes were new and of a fashionable cut seemed only to make him +the more grotesque. He looked oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile +of greeting appeared to have shrunk also—something had gone out of it. + +“Well, Cater, you find me down,” said Justin, with glittering, cold +cheerfulness. + +“I hope not for long,” said the visitor. + +“Oh, no; but, when I get up, you won’t see me going past much longer; +I’ll soon be out of the old place. I guess the game is up, as far as I’m +concerned. Your end is ahead.” + +“Mr. Alexander,” began Cater, clearing his throat and bending earnestly +toward Justin, who, with the folds of his blue dressing-gown around him, +had the unnatural surroundings of the flowered-chintz-covered bedroom +furniture, and Lois’ swinging-glassed, mahogany dressing-table with its +silver appointments. The room had already the cleared-up neatness with +which one prepares for illness, with everything irrelevant put away. A +cluster of white tulips was in a thin glass vase on the mantel; the +shades were drawn to an inch, so that an unglaring yet dimly cheerful +light came through them; on the little mahogany stand by Cater there was +a glass of water and a watch, ticking face upward. Cater’s elbow jostled +into the light table as he turned, and he steadied it before bracing +himself to go on. “I hope you ain’t going to hold it up against me that +I had to make a different business deal from what we proposed; I’ve been +thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasn’t any written agreement, +you know.” + +“No, there was no written agreement,” assented Justin; “there was +nothing to bind you.” + +“That’s what I said to myself. If there had been, I’d ’a’ stuck to it, +of course. But a man’s got to do the best he can for himself in this +world.” + +“Has he?” asked the sick man, with an enigmatic questioning smile. + +“I’d be mighty sorry to have anything come between us. I reckon I took a +shine to you the first day I met up with you,” continued Cater +helplessly. “I’d be mighty sorry to think we weren’t friends.” + +Justin’s brilliant eyes surveyed him serenely. Something sadly humorous, +yet noble and imposing, seemed to emanate from his presence, weak and a +failure though he was. “I can be friends with you, but you can’t be +friends with me, Cater; it isn’t in you to know how,” he said. +“Good-by.” + +“Well, good-by,” said the other, rising, his long, angular figure +knocking awkwardly against chairs and tables as he went out, leaving +Justin lying there alone, with his head throbbing horribly. Yet, +strangely enough, in spite of it, his mind felt luminously clear, in +that a certain power seemed to have come to him—a power of correlating +all the events of the past eighteen months and placing them in their +relative sequence. A certain faith—the candid, boyish, unquestioning +faith in the adequacy of his knowledge of those whom he had called his +friends—was gone; the face of Leverich came to him, brutal in its +unveiled cupidity, showing what other men felt but concealed, yet his +own faith in honor and honesty remained, stronger and higher than ever +before. Nothing, he knew, could take it from him; it was a faith that he +had won from the battle with his own soul. If other so-called material +things had to go, then they had to—he couldn’t pay the price, for one! +He saw now that he had been foredoomed from the start. Men who ventured +on a capital controlled by others, hadn’t any chance of free movement. + +By to-morrow night that note of Lewiston’s would be protested, and +then—the burning pain of failure gripped him in its racking clutches +once more, though he strove to fight it off. He would have to get well +quickly, so as to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to +get bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were successful +were sought for, but men of his age who were not had a pretty hard row +to hoe. + +Lois was long gone—probably she was with the baby. He missed his +handkerchief, and rose and went over, with a swaying unsteadiness, to +his chiffonier drawer in the farther corner to get one. A pistol lying +there in its leather case, as it had done any time this five years, for +a reserve protection against burglars, caught his eyes. He took it out +of its case, examining the little weapon carefully, with his finger on +the trigger, half cocking it, to see if it needed oil. It was a pretty +little toy. Suddenly, as he held it there, leaning against the +chiffonier, his thin white face with its deep black shadows under the +eyes reflected by the high, narrow glass, the four walls faded away from +him, with their familiar objects; his face gleamed whiter and whiter; +the shadows grew blacker; only his eyes stared—— + +A room, noticed once a year and a half ago, came before him now with a +creeping, all-possessing distinctness—that loathsome, dreadful room +(long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of +horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his +career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. +He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp, +mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which +he was drawn—drawn a little nearer and a little nearer; the thing in +his hand—did it move itself? Cold to his touch it moved—— + +The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, glided up to him. +She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; her lips refused to speak. + +“Why, you needn’t have been afraid, dear,” he said at once, looking at +her with a gentle surprise. “I’m not a coward, to go and leave you +_that_ way. You need never be afraid of that, Lois.” + +“No,” said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what +made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had +suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justin—what +strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her +there. + +She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his wants and +getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, and then knelt down +beside him where he lay, putting her arms around him. + +“You oughtn’t to be doing this for me; I ought to be taking care of +_you_,” he said, with a tender self-reproach that seemed to come from a +new, hitherto unknown Justin, who watched her face to see if it showed +fatigue, and counted the steps she took for him. + +The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and came again later. +The last time he looked grave, ordered complete quiet, and left +sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought on by overwork, had evidently +taken a disregarded hold some time before, and must be reckoned with +now. What Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all +things, freedom from care. Freedom from care! + +Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. An impression of +Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room +where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he +dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar +poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it +made one honorable to serve him. + +The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when +Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois’ +room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At +Dosia’s entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she +was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately +as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied criticism: + +“I don’t care what you say—I don’t care what anybody says. I can’t +stand it any longer, when it’s _killing_ him! He _can’t_ rest unless he +has that money. Am I to just sit down and let my husband die, when he’s +in such trouble as this? Is _that_ all I can do? Why, whose trouble is +it? Mine as well as his! If it’s his responsibility, it’s mine, +too—mine as well as his!” + +She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the table, and was +unconscious that it bled. “If there’s nobody else to get that money for +him, _I’ll_ rise up and get it. He’s stood alone long enough—long +enough! He says there is no help left, but he forgets that there’s his +wife!” + +“Oh, Lois,” said Dosia, half weeping. “Oh, Lois, what can _you_ do? +There, you’ve waked the baby—he’s crying.” + +“Get me the waist to this skirt and my walking-jacket. No, give me the +baby first; he’s hungry.” + +She spoke collectedly, bending over the child as she held him to her, +and straightening the folds of the little garments. “There, there, dear +little heart, dear little heart, mother’s comfort—oh, my comfort, my +blessing! Get my things out of the closet now, Dosia, and my gloves from +that drawer, the top one. Oh, and bring me baby’s cloak and cap, too. I +forgot that I couldn’t leave him. I must take him with me.” She had sunk +her voice to a low murmur, so as not to disturb the child. + +“Where are you going?” asked Dosia. + +“To Eugene Larue.” + +“Mr. Larue!” + +“Yes. He’ll let me have the money—he’ll understand. He wouldn’t let +Justin have it, but he’ll give it to me—if I’m not too proud to ask for +it; and I’m not too proud.” She spoke in a tone the more thrilling for +its enforced calm. “There are things a man will do for a woman, when he +won’t for a man because then he has to be businesslike; but he doesn’t +have to be businesslike to a woman—he can lend to her just because she +needs it.” + +“Lois!” + +“Oh, there’s many a woman—like me—who always knows, even though she +never acts on the knowledge, that there is some man she could go to for +help, and get it, just because she was _herself_—a woman and in +trouble—just for that! Dosia, if I go to Eugene Larue myself in +trouble—_such_ trouble——” + +“But he’s out at Collingswood!” said Dosia, bewildered. + +“Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, it connects at +Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an hour to get to the place; +I’ve looked it up in the time-table. I’ll be back here again by ten +o’clock. I——” She stopped with a sudden intense motion of listening, +then put the child from her and ran across the hall to the opposite +room. + +When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: “Justin’s gone to +sleep now. The doctor says he will be under the influence of the +anodynes until morning. Mrs. Bently is in there—I sent for her; she +says she’ll stay until I get back.” Mrs. Bently was a woman of the +plainer class, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. “If the +children wake up they won’t be afraid with her; but you’ll be here, +anyway.” + +“Leave the baby with me,” implored Dosia. + +“No, I can’t—suppose I were detained? _Then_ I’d go crazy! He won’t be +any bother, he’s so little and so light.” + +“Very well, then; I’ll go, too,” stated Dosia in desperation. “I am not +needed here. You must have some one with you if you have baby! Let me +go, Lois! You _must!_” + +“Oh, very well, if you like,” responded Lois indifferently. But that the +suggestion was an unconscious relief to her she showed the next moment, +as she gave some directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries and some +biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the baby if it +grew chilly. + +The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be lighted and the gas +turned down, and the new maid impressed with the fact that they would be +back at a little after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After +Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin as he slept—his +head thrown forward a little on the pillow, his right hand clasped, and +his knees bent as one supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois +stooped over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who +sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit. + +Then the two women walked down the street toward the station, Lois +absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia distracted, confused, half +assenting and half dissenting to the expedition. + +“Are you sure Mr. Larue will be at Collingswood?” she asked anxiously. + +“Justin saw him Saturday. He said he was going out there then for the +summer.” + +So far it would be all right, then. They had passed the Snows’ house, +and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of life there; she hesitated, and +then went on. As they got beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked +back, and saw Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza. + +“I’ll catch up to you in a moment,” she said to Lois, and ran back +quickly. + +“Miss Bertha!” + +“Why, Dosia, my dear, I didn’t see you; don’t speak loud!” Miss Bertha’s +face, her whispering lips, her hands, were trembling with excitement. +“We’ve been under quite a strain, but it’s all over now—I’m sure I can +tell _you_. Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr. +Sutton has just proposed to Ada—in the sitting-room. We left them the +parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. Mother’s white shawl is in +there, and I haven’t been able to get it.” + +“Oh!” said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance of the fact. +“Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be in later?” + +“No, not until to-morrow night,” said Miss Bertha as blankly, but Dosia +had already gone on. She did not know whether she were relieved or sorry +that Girard was not there. She did not know what she had meant to say to +him, but it had seemed as if she _must_ see him. She caught up to Lois +and the baby in a few steps, and drew back into the station as Billy +passed it. She had felt anxiously as if some one ought to know where +they were going, but not Billy—Billy, who was always now either too +melancholy or too joyous, as she rebuffed or relented. + +Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit seemed to be +wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as the darkness that was +gathering around them. Only, when they were at last in the train, she +threw back her veil and smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief +in the smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost +roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness of heart to Dosia. + +“He will lend me the money,” said Lois, with a grateful, touching +confidence that seemed to shut out every conventional, every worldly +suggestion, and to breathe only of her need and the willingness of a +friend to help—not alone for the need’s sake, but for hers. + +Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see him; his bearded +lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, piercing eyes, were not +attractive to her. The whole thing was very bewildering. + +It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, where they changed +cars for the little branch road that went past Collingswood—a signal +station, as the conductor who punched their tickets impressed on Lois. +Haledon itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of people on +the platform continually coming and going under the electric lights. As +Lois and Dosia waited for their train, an automobile dashed up, and a +man and a woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took their +place among those who were waiting for the westbound express. The woman, +large and elegantly gowned, had something familiar in her outline as she +turned to her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair +mustache—the man who lately had been seen everywhere with Mrs. +Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia shrank back into the shadow. +The light struck full athwart the large, full-blown face of Myra as she +turned to the man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly +cognizant, smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar between his +teeth. + +Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shame—she had seen something +that should have been hidden in darkness. They were going off together. +All those whispers about Mrs. Leverich had been true. + +There were only a few people in the shaky, rattling little car when Lois +and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road +with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on +the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor +of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in +his long cloak, slept all the way. It was but seven miles to +Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the +journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station +with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the +ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran after him. + +“Mr. Larue’s place is near here, isn’t it?” she called. + +“Yes, over there to the right,” said the youth, pointing down the board +walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, “about a quarter of a mile down. +You’ll know when you come to the gates. They’re big iron ones.” + +“Isn’t there any way of riding?” + +“I guess not,” said the youth, and disappeared into the woods on a +bicycle. + +“Oh, it will be only a step,” said Lois, starting off in the direction +indicated, followed perforce by Dosia with the hand-bag, both walking in +silence. + +The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact daylight +possibility, had been growing gradually a thing of the dark, unknown, +fantastic. A faint remnant of the fading light remained in the west, +vanishing as they looked at it. Above the treetops a pale moon hung +high; there seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that +iron track curved out of sight. + +The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with that strangely +eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big iron gates were reached at +last, showing a long winding drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue +had built a house for his bride, living in it these summers when she was +away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess tacitly before the +world that he was unable to make his wife care for him—a darkened, +desolate, lonely life, as dark and as desolate as this house seemed now. +An undefined dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently: + +“The walk has not really been very long. We’ll probably drive back. It’s +odd that there are no lights, but perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah, +there’s a light!” + +Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung on the cornice +above—it was the moon and not a lamp that had made it. They ascended +the piazza steps; there was no one there. + +“There is a knocker at the front door,” said Lois. She pounded, and the +noise vibrated terrifyingly through the stillness. At the same instant a +scraping on the gravel walk behind them made them turn. It was the boy +on the bicycle, who, having sped back to them, was wheeling around at +the moment that he might lose no impetus in retracing his way, while he +leaned over to call: + +“Mr. Larue ain’t there. The woman who closed up the house told me he had +a cable from his wife, and he sailed for Europe this afternoon. She +says, do you want the key?” + +“No,” said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared. + +“I wish he had waited until we could have asked him some questions,” +said Dosia, vexed. “Don’t let’s stay here; it’s too dark and too +dreadfully lonely under these trees. We had better get back to the +station and wait for the train.” + +“I suppose so,” said Lois drearily. This, then, was the end of her +exaltation—for this she had passionately nerved herself! There was to +be neither the warmth of instant comprehension of her errand, nor the +frank giving of aid when necessity had been pleaded; there was nothing. +She shifted the baby over to the other shoulder, and they retraced their +way, which now seemed familiar and short. There was, at any rate, a +light on a tall pole in front of the little station, although the +station itself was deserted; they seated themselves on the bench under +it to wait. The train was not scheduled for nearly an hour yet. The +watch that Lois carried showed that it was a quarter to nine. + +“Oh, if I could only fly back!” she groaned. “I don’t see how I can +wait—I don’t see how I can wait! Oh, why did I come?” + +“Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of,” said Dosia, with +the terribly self-accusing feeling now that she ought to have prevented +the expedition at the beginning. She got up to go into the little box of +a house, in search of a time-table. As she passed the tall post that +held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper, and read aloud the words +written on it below the date: + + NOTICE + + NO TRAINS WILL RUN ON THIS ROAD TO-NIGHT + AFTER 8.30 P.M., ON ACCOUNT OF REPAIRS + +Dosia and Lois looked at each other with the blankness of despair—the +frantic, forlornly heroic impulse, uncalculating of circumstances, began +to show itself in all its piteous woman-folly. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN + + +Only fifty miles from a great city, the little station seemed like the +typical lodge in a wilderness; as far as one could see up or down the +track, on either side were wooded hills. A vast silence seemed to be +gathering from unseen fastnesses, to halt in this spot. + +There were no houses and no light to be seen anywhere, except that one +swinging on the pole above, and the moon which was just rising. It was, +in fact, one of those places which consist of the far, back-lying acres +of the great country-owners, and which seem to the casual traveler +forgotten or unknown in their extent and apparently primitive condition. +The other railroad, six or seven miles away, went past the country towns +and the façaded mansions and the conventional horticultural grounds of +the possessors of these uncultivated tracts of woodland. + +To the women sitting on the bench, wrapped around by the loneliness and +the intense stillness of the oncoming night, the whole expedition +appeared at last unveiled in all its grim betrayal. While Lois had been +exaltedly imaginative, had resolved so desperately, had acted so +daringly, there had never been, from the inception of the scheme, any +chance that it could succeed. For the first time since Lois had left +home, a wild seething anxiety for Justin possessed her. How could she +have left him? She must go back to him at once! + +“Oh, Dosia, we must get home again; we must get home!” she cried, +starting up so vehemently that the baby in her arms screamed, startled, +and Lois walked up and down distractedly hushing him, and then, as he +still wailed, sat down once more and bared her white bosom to quiet him, +talking the while in a low tone: “We will have to get back; Dosia, we +must start at once.” + +“We will have to walk to Haledon,” said Dosia. + +“Yes, yes. Perhaps we may come to some farmhouse where they will let us +have a wagon, or one may pass us on the way and give us a lift. It is +seven miles to Haledon—that isn’t very far! I often walked five miles +with Justin before I was married, and a mile or two more is nothing. +There are plenty of trains from Haledon.” + +“Oh, we can do it easily enough,” said Dosia, though her heart was as +lead within her breast. “You had better eat some of these biscuits +before we start,” she advised, taking them out of the bag; and Lois +munched them obediently, and drank some tepid water from a pitcher which +Dosia had found inside. As she put it back again in its place, she +slipped to the side of the platform and looked down the moon-filled +narrow valley. + +Through all this journey Dosia had carried double thoughts; her voice +called where none might hear. It spoke to far distances now as she +whispered, with hands outspread: + +“Oh, _why_ weren’t you in when I went for you? Why didn’t you come and +take care of us, when I needed you so much? Why did you let us go off +this way? You might have known! Why _don’t_ you come and take care of +us? There’s no one to take care of us but you! _You_ could!” A dry sob +stopped the words—the deep, inherent cry of womankind to man for help, +for succor. She stooped over and picked up an oak-leaf that had lain on +the ground since the winter, and pressed it to her bosom, and sent it +fluttering off on a gust of wind down the incline, as if it could indeed +take her message with it, before she went back to Lois. + +After some hesitation as to the path,—one led across the rails from +where they were sitting,—they finally took that behind the station, +which broadened out into a road that lay along the wooded slope above, +from which they could look down at intervals and see the track below. +One side of that road was bordered by a high wire fencing inclosing +pieces of woodland, sometimes so thick as to be impenetrable, while +along other stretches there would be glimpsed through the trees some +farther open field. To the right toward the railway, there were only +woods and no fencing. + +The two walked off briskly at first, but the road was of a heavy, loose, +shelving soil in which the foot sank at each step; the grass at the edge +was wet with dew and intersected by the ridged, branching roots of +trees; the pace grew, perforce, slower and slower still. They took turns +in carrying the baby, whose small bundled form began to seem as if +weighted with lead. + +Far over on what must have been the other side of the track, they +occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a +little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong +bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they +came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with +fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they +pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of passing any +given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could +never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and +trees. Trees! They became nightmarishly oppressive in those dark, solemn +ranks and groups—those silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath +them; terror lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the trees, +away into the open, with only the clear sky overhead! If that road to +the house of Eugene Larue had seemed a part of infinity in the dimness +of the unknown, what was this? + +They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosia’s voice coaxing and +cheering, and then got up to shake the earth out of their shoes and +struggle on once more—bending, shivering, leaning against each other +for support; two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection with +other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the universe, as women do +toil, apparently futile of result. + +Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, +clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot by—a cheerful +monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation +behind it. Why hadn’t they seen it before? Why hadn’t they tried to hail +it when they _did_ see? To have had such a chance and lost it! It seemed +to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent thought. Once they were +frightened almost uncontrollably by a group of men approaching with +strange sounds—a group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible +when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering, +two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there were +more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and +trees—and trees— + +“Do you suppose we’ll _ever_ get out of here?” asked Lois at last, +dully. + +“Why, of course; we can’t help getting out, if we keep on,” said Dosia, +in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone. + +It was she who was helper and guide now. + +“Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do +you think we have walked, Dosia?” + +“It seems so endless, I can’t tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon,” +said Dosia. “Let’s sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois +_dear_!” She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp grass +for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the +older woman’s head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child +in her young arms. “Oh, Lois, Lois!” + +Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came +the murmur of the brook they had passed in the train—so long since, it +seemed! The moon hung higher above now, pouring a flood of light down +through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with +its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something +in the utter relaxation of the attitude and manner began to alarm the +girl. + +“Lois, we must go on,” she said, with an anxious note in her voice. +“Lois! You _mustn’t_ give up. We can’t stay here!” + +“Yes, I know,” said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk +ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the +shadow-embroidered road over which they had just passed. + +“Oh, why _don’t_ you come!” she whispered again intensely, with +passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up to Lois, took the +child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the +accompaniment of that far-off brook. + +The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, the walls of +trees darker, closer together, though the soil under foot grew firmer. +They had to stop every few minutes to rest. Lois saw ever before her the +one objective point—a dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out +upon the bed, dying, while she could not get there. Hope was crushed +out. Death and ruin—that was the end. + +The end! There are paths one walks along in life that seem only to end +in the barrier of a stone wall, with “No thoroughfare” written on it; +there is no way beyond. Yet, when one gets close to that insurmountable, +impenetrable barrier, how often there is seen to be some hitherto +unnoticed aperture, some little postern-gate by which one can pass on +into the highroad! + +“Hark!” said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound of a voice +trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came nearer, while the women stood +terrified. The thing they had both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the +moonlight brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with a +bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future could compare +with this one, that neared them with the seconds, swaying unsteadily +from side to side of the road, as the tipsy voice alternately muttered +and roared the reiterated words: + + “For I have come from Pad-dy land, + The land—I do adore!” + +They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he +passed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seen—a blotched, +dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own. +They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a +tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly +near—the pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one saw it through +the lights and shadows under the trees, capless and coatless, with +sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the elbows, and head held forward. +Suddenly the pace slackened, stopped. + +“Great _heavens_!” said the voice of Bailey Girard. + +“Oh, it’s you, it’s you!” cried Dosia, running to him with an ineffable, +revealing gesture, a lovely motion of her upflinging arms, a passion of +joy in the face upraised to his, that called forth an instantly +flashing, all-embracing light in his. + +In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each of an intimacy that +went back of all words, back of all action. The arms that upheld her +gripped her close to him as one who defends his own as he said tensely: + +“That beast ahead, did he touch you?” + +“Oh, no; he didn’t see us. We hid!” She tried to explain in hurrying, +disconnected sentences. “I’ve been longing and _praying_ for you to +come! I tried to let you know before we started, and you weren’t there. +Lois was half crazy about Justin. Come to her now! She wanted to see Mr. +Larue, and he was gone. We’ve walked from Collingswood; we have the baby +with us.” + +“The _baby_!” + +“Yes; she couldn’t leave him behind. Oh, it’s been so terrible! If you +had only known!” + +“Oh, why didn’t I?” he groaned. “I ought to have known—I _ought_ to +have known! I was in that motor that must have passed you; it was just a +chance that I got out to walk.” They had reached the place where Lois +sat, and he bent over her tenderly. She smiled into his anxious eyes, +though her poor face was sunken and wan. + +“I’m glad it’s you,” she whispered. “You’ll help me to get home!” + +“Dear Mrs. Alexander! I want to help you to more than that. I want you +to tell me everything.” He pressed her hand, and stood looking +irresolutely down the road. + +“I could go to Haledon, and send back a carriage for you; it’s three +miles further on.” + +“No, no, no! Don’t leave us!” the accents came in terror from both. “We +can walk with you. Only don’t leave us!” + +“Very well; we’ll try it, then.” + +He took the warm bundle that was the sleeping child from Lois, saying, +as she half demurred, “It’s all right; I’ve carried ’em in the +Spanish-American War in Cuba,” holding it in one arm, while with the +other he supported Lois. The dragging march began again, Dosia, +stumbling sometimes, trying to keep alongside of him, so that when he +turned his head anxiously to look for her she would be there, to meet +his eyes with hers, bravely scorning fatigue. + +The trees had disappeared now from the side of the road; long, swelling, +wild fields lay on the slopes of the hillside, broken only by solitary +clumps of bushes—fields deserted of life, broad resting-places for the +moonlight, which illumined the farthest edge of the scene, although the +moon itself was hidden by the crest of a hill. And as they went on, +slowly perforce, he questioned Lois gently; and she, with simple words, +gradually laid the facts bare. + +“Oh, why didn’t Alexander tell me all this?” he asked pitifully, and she +answered: + +“He said it was no use; he said you had no money.” + +“No; but I can sometimes get it for other people! I could have gone to +Rondell Brothers and got it.” + +“Rondell Brothers? I thought they were difficult to approach.” + +“That depends. I was with Rondell’s boy in Cuba when he had the fever, +and he’s always said—but that’s neither here nor there. Apart from +that, they’ve had their eye on your husband lately. You can’t hide the +quality of a man like him, Mrs. Alexander; it shows in a hundred ways +that he doesn’t think of. They have had dealings with him, though he +doesn’t know it—it’s been through agents. Mr. Warren, one of their best +men, has, it seems, taken a fancy to him. I shouldn’t wonder if they’d +take over the typometer as it stands, and work Alexander in with it. If +Rondell Brothers really take up anyone——!” Girard did not need to +finish. + +Even Lois and Dosia had heard of Rondell Brothers, the great firm that +was known from one end of the country to the other—a commercial house +whose standing was as firm, as unquestioned, as the Bank of England, and +almost as conservative. Apart from this, its reputation was unique. The +house was more than a commercial establishment: it was an institution, +in which for three generations the firm known as Rondell Brothers had +carried on, in the conduct of their business—and carried to high +advantage—the principles of personal honor and honesty and fair +dealing. + +No boy or man of good character, intelligence, and industry was ever +connected with Rondell’s without its making for his advancement; to get +a position there was to be assured of his future. Their young men stayed +with them, and rose steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from +them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young +firms whom Rondell Brothers had started and made, and whose profit also +afterwards profited them, were more than had ever been counted. They +were never deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their +own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they +exacted the same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other +guaranty than the name of Rondell. + +If Rondell Brothers took Justin’s affairs in hand! Lois felt a hope that +sent life through her veins. + +“Oh, let us hurry home!” she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace, +though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while +Dosia slipped a little behind, still trying to keep her place by his +side, so that she might meet his look when he turned to her. + +“You’re so tired,” he whispered, with a break in his voice, “and I can’t +help you!” and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with +her comforting “No, no, no! I’m not really tired”; her voice thrilled +with life, though her feet stumbled. + +In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far +solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, +they two were so heart-close—so heavenly, so fulfillingly near! + +Once he whispered in a yearning distress, “Why are you crying?” And she +answered through those welling tears: + +“I’m only crying because I’m so glad you’re here!” + +After a while there was a sound of wheels—wheels! Only a sulky, it +proved to be—a mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a +trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the +turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it. + +“You’ll have to take another passenger,” he said, after explaining +matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the +farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six +inches allotted to her. + +She held out her arms hastily. “My boy!” she said, but it was a voice +that had hope in it once more. + +“Oh, yes, I forgot; here’s the baby,” said Girard, looking curiously at +the bundle before handing it to her. “We’ll meet you at the Haledon +station very soon now; my friends will have left my hat and coat there +for me.” + +In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a +bend of the road. + +So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook +again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those +far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was +like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern +and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the +roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, +of absorbing all the life of the scene. + +Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the +first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that +moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the +world from him. + +The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone: + +“Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your shoes before we go +on; they’re full of earth.” + +She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him while he knelt down +and loosened the bows, and took off the little clumpy low shoes, shaking +them out carefully, and then put them on once more, retying the bows +neatly with long, slowly accomplishing fingers. + +“They’ll get full of earth again,” she protested, her voice half lost in +the silence. + +“Then I’ll take them off and shake them out over again.” + +He stood up, brushing the sand from his palms, smiling down at her as +she stood up also. “I’ve always dreamed of doing that,” he said simply. +“I’ve dreamed of taking you in my arms and carrying you off through the +night—as I couldn’t that first time! I’ve longed so to do it. There +have been times when I couldn’t _stand_ it to see you, because you +weren’t mine.” Then—her hands were in his, his dear, protecting hands, +the hands she loved, with their thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming +as well as giving. + +“Oh—_Dosia!_” he said below his breath. + +As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all that had hurt +love rose up between them, and passed away, forgiven. She foresaw a time +when all her life before he came into it would have dropped out of +remembrance as a tale that is told. And now—— + +It seemed that he was going to be a very splendid lover! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT + + +The summer was nearly at an end—a summer that had brought +rehabilitation to the Typometer Company, yet rehabilitation of a certain +kind, under strict rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally the +same thing, the typometer was now but one factor of trade among a dozen +other patented inventions under the control of Rondell Brothers. + +If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet in Justin’s +relation to the business which had seemed so inspiringly his own, there +was a larger relation to greater interests, a wider field, a greater +sense of security, and a sense of justice in the change; he felt that he +had much to learn. There was something in him that could not profit +where other men profited—that could not take advantage when that +advantage meant loss to another. He was not great enough alone to +reconcile the narrowing factors of trade with that warring law within +him. The stumbling of Cater would have been another stumbling-block if +it had not been that one; that for which Leverich, with Martin always +behind him, had chosen Justin first had been the very thing that had +fought against them. + +[Illustration: _He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into +the room_] + +The summer was far spent. Justin had been working hard. It was long +after midnight. Lois slept, but Justin could not; he rose and went into +the adjoining room, and sat down by the open window. The night had been +very close, but now a faint breath stirred from somewhere out of the +darkness. It was just before the dawn—Justin looked out into a gloom in +which the darkness of trees wavered uncertainly and brought with it a +vague remembrance. He had done all this before. When? Suddenly he +recollected the night he had sat at this same window, at the beginning +of this terrible journey, and his thoughts and feelings then; his deep +loneliness of soul, the prevision of the pain even of fulfillment—an +endless, endless arid waste, with the welling forth of that black spirit +of evil in his own nature as the only vital thing to bear him secret +company—a moment that was wolfish to his better nature. Almost with the +remembrance came the same mood, but only as reflected in the surface of +his saner nature, not arising from it. + +As he gazed, wrapped in self-communing, on the vague formlessness of the +night, it began gradually to dissolve mysteriously, and the outlines of +the trees and the surrounding objects melted into view; a bird sang from +somewhere near by, a heavenly, clear, full-throated call that brought a +shaft of light from across the world, broadening, as the eye leaped to +it, into a great and spreading glory of flame. + +It had rained just before; the drops still hung on bush and tree, and as +the dazzling radiance of the sun touched them every drop also radiated +light, prismatic and scintillating—an almost audibly tinkling joy. So +indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this +scene—as of a mighty light informing the least atom of our tearful +human existence—that the profoundest depths of Justin’s nature opened +to the illumination. + +In that moment, with calm eyes, and lips firmly pressed together, his +thoughts reached upward; far, far upward. For the first time, he felt in +accordance with something divine and beyond—an accordance that seemed +to solve the meaning of life; what had gone and what was to come. All +the hopes, the planning, the seeking and slaving, whatever they +accomplished or did not accomplish, they fashioned us, ourselves. As it +had been, so it still would be. But for what had gone before, he had not +had this hour. + +It was the journey itself that counted—the dear joys by the way, that +come even through suffering and through pain—the joy of the red dawn, +of the summer breeze, of the winter sun; the joy of children, the joy of +companionship. + +He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room. + + THE END + + + + + By Mary Stewart Cutting + +THE SUBURBAN WHIRL + + The first story in the book may be properly termed a “long” story of + married life. It is a wholesome, delicately humorous and pathetic + account of the struggles of a young couple to establish themselves + in the suburbs. With this, three equally charming shorter stories of + “the happiest time” make up the volume. + + “The charm of these stories is that they are about real people in a + real world.” _San Francisco Call_. + + _Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + “Mrs. Cutting has written a book so typically American that it + should appeal to every American reader who respects the institution + of marriage, and who is honest enough to admit that love is the only + solution of the problem.” _New York Globe_. + + _Seventh Edition. Cloth, $1.35_ + +MORE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + “As they celebrate true love, not the yearning kind, but the brand + that cherishes and forgets and forgives and strengthens, they should + go with the wedding presents of every June bride.” _Cleveland + Leader_. + + _Frontispiece. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP + + “Readers who enjoyed the ‘Little Stories of Married Life’ by this + author will not be disappointed in this new collection....” _New + York Evening Post_. + + _Third Edition. Cloth, $1.25_ + +The McClure Company + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wayfarers, by Mary Stewart Cutting + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + +***** This file should be named 37208-0.txt or 37208-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/0/37208/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/37208-0.zip b/37208-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0fb4043 --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-0.zip diff --git a/37208-8.txt b/37208-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bd0ac2 --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11450 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wayfarers, by Mary Stewart Cutting + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wayfarers + +Author: Mary Stewart Cutting + +Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens + +Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: _Her cousins arms were at last around her in welcome_] + + + + + THE WAYFARERS + + BY + + MARY STEWART CUTTING + + AUTHOR OF LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP, + LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE, ETC. + + ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS + + NEW YORK + THE McCLURE COMPANY + MCMVIII + + + + + _Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company_ + Published, June, 1908 + Copyright, 1907, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Company + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Her Cousins Arms were at Last Around Her in Welcome Frontispiece + +They Both Sat Dreamily Watching the Blue Pinnacle of Flame 24 + +Theodosia 34 + +Zaidee Watched Dosia with Benignant Satisfaction 82 + +He Played a Chord or Two More to Her Silence 146 + +It was a Look She Knew 184 + +Like a Pictured Marchioness of Old 190 + +Somebody Began to Come Down with Hurrying, Stumbling Feet 192 + +Mr. Sutton Leaned over Dosia with Eyes for Nobody Else 230 + +Flowers and Children, Children and Flowers 238 + +Never Let Him Come Here Again--Never, Never! 246 + +Even Redge Had Been Allowed to Hold Him 278 + +After This He Only Appeared in the Village Street Guarded on + Either Side by a Female Snow 280 + +He Came Toward Her with the Pitcher 312 + +Sat Desolately on the Top Step 334 + +He Held Out His Arm Unconsciously as Lois Stole into the Room 372 + + + + +THE WAYFARERS + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat crowded with human +beings at a quarter of six oclock in the evening, when the great +homeward rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. At that +time, although there are some returning shoppers and women type-writers +and clerks, the larger number of the passengers are men, sitting in +slanting rows to catch the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an +upright mass at the forward end of the boat. It is noticeable that, with +a few exceptions, those who have gone forth in the morning distinct +individuals, well dressed, freshly shaven, with clean linen, an animated +manner, a brisk step, and an eager-eyed disposition toward the labors of +the day, seem, as they return at night, to be only component parts of a +shabby crowd in indistinguishable apparel, and worn to a uniform +dullness not only of appearance but of attitude and expression. The hard +days work is over, but the rest is not yet attained. We all know that +between the darkness and the dawn comes the period when vitality is at +its lowest ebb, and in all transition periods there is a subtle +withdrawing of the old force before the new fills its place. In that +temporary collapse in the daily adjustment between two lives, the +business and the domestic, many a man with overwrought brain and tired +body feels that what he has been looking forward to as a happy rest +appears to him now momentarily as an unavoidable and wearying need for +further effort. The demand upon him varies in kind, but it is still +there. + +Men in a mass are neither beautiful nor impressive to look at in the +modern black or sad-colored raiment of every-day custom, and it is +difficult, as the eyes rest on the faces in these commonplace rows, to +realize the space which love inevitably fills in these lives, so far +apart from romance do they seem, forgetful as we are of the worn truth +that romance is a flowering weed which grows in any soil. For three +fourths of these men some woman waits. Those dull eyes can gleam, those +set lips can kiss; these be heroes, handsome men, arbiters of destiny! +There is positive grotesqueness in the idea, seen in this obliterating +haze of fatigue that so maliciously dwarfs and slurs. That man over +there with the long upper lip and closed lids has an episode in his +middle-aged existence to match any in the annals of fiction. That other +beside him, short, fat, with kind eyes and a stubby brown beard, is the +sum of all that is good and beautiful to the wife for whom his +homecoming continues to be the poignant event of the day. This man with +the long, thin face is a modern martyr working himself to death for his +family; this one was in the newspapers last week in a connection best +not remembered. This oneyou would pick him out at once from among the +restis to be married to-morrow. This man, and this, and this, while +presently unconscious of the great law, are still living under it. Not +only to youth is the promise given; it becomes a larger and more vital +thing as the opportunities of life increase, further spreading in its +fostering of good or evila thread so deeply interwoven on the under +side of the fabric that we forget to look for it. + +In every case is a character to be made or marred, not only by the large +molding, but by the infinitesimal touches of that love whose influence +we conventionally limit to young and unmarried personswhile knowing, +whether we acknowledge it or not, that it is the one eternally powerful +element in life. + +Even in a far-off reflex action, this is shown on the ferry-boat in the +fact that when one of this blended concourse of men meets a woman he +instantly regains an individuality; he pulls himself together, his eyes +become bright, his manner concentrated, his clothes set well on him. He +is no longer one of the crowd, but himself. + +Tireless youth may achieve the same individual effect, or unusual +personal beauty, or great happiness, or the possession of a dominant +idea. A number of people, as they came forward on the boat, turned to +look back at two men sitting by the narrow passageway, who in the midst +of the general indifference were talking in a low tone, with obviously +intense earnestness. Those who looked once usually turned a second time +to gaze on the face of one. + +Many a man who has an upright nature and a good disposition fails to +show these facts patently to the casual observer. To Justin Alexander +had been given the grace of a singularly attractive countenance. He was +of a fair complexion, with light hair, a good nose slightly aquiline, +and a well-shaped mouth and chin; but his charm was irrespective of +feature. No one could look at him and not know him to be a man of sweet +and fine honor. The gaze of his keen blue eyesclear, though not very +largecarried conviction to whomsoever it rested on that a clean and +honest soul dwelt therein. Although he did not in the least realize it, +this had been one of the greatest factors in any success that he had +ever had, joined as it was to good judgment and great physical energy. +Everyone liked him, not for what he said or did, but for what he was, +and for the encouragement of his bright glance, which had a convincing +and magnetic quality in it. He talked intelligently and well, although +not a great deal, and among the many people who were drawn toward him a +corresponding liking on his part was easily inferred. Yet he was, in +fact, innately although dumbly critical; a reticent man as to his own +thoughts and opinions, he took an inward measurement of persons and +circumstances often the very reverse of what was supposed. This attitude +of his was in no sense of the word hypocritical, it came instead from a +constitutional dislike of voicing his innermost feelings. It somehow +hurt him to acknowledge defects in others, and he had also an impersonal +sense of justice which allowed for good qualities in those who were +uncongenial to him; he did not really like the man who sat beside him, +and with whom he had the prospect of being intimately associated, but +even his wife had hardly divined this; certainly Joseph Leverich +himself, large, jovial, and shrewd-eyed, would have been the last to +suspect it. + +The gist of the matter is this, Alexander, he was saying, as he hit +one hand heavily with the large forefinger of the other, we want a man +capable not only of overseeing the works,Harker understands that +pretty well,but of managing the real business of the factory and +representing it with business men; neither Foster nor I can attend to +itGreat Scott, I wish we could! We havent the time. We bought the +whole outfit a couple of years ago; its only one of twenty other irons +we have in the fire. + +I know that your interests are large, said Alexander, as Leverich +paused. + +The great drawback to having large interests is that you have to +delegate so much of the management to others. When we took up this, it +ran itself, after a fashion; but since that a dozen other people are +making the same thingof course, with slight variations, but +practically the same thing. Patents dont really protect you much. Now +we want our machine pushed; but neither Foster nor I, for different +reasons, can do this. The fact is, we dont want to appear at all. And +weve had our eye on you for some time. + +This is news to me, said Alexander. + +Now the control of the factory has to be settled suddenly, out of hand; +somebody has got to take hold. So we make you the offer. We will deposit +fifty thousand to your credit, to be used as working capitalyou cant +branch out with less; youve got to be able to work to advantage. The +days have gone when a business could be set going on a couple of +thousand and worked up with industry and frugality, as the copy-books +say, into the millions. Small concerns nowadays go to the walland +serve em right, I say; only fools believe in success without money. +Well see to your backing! Of course, the interest will be paid out of +the business, you dont undertake it individually. At the end of two +years more we ought to have a big thing. + +And if we dont? said Alexander. + +The others dim gooseberry eyes suddenly flashed. If you think we will +not, you are not the man we wanthes got to have the courage of his +convictions to be worth his salt. But you cant put me off this wayI +know you. Take up the project or leave itI say this, but in reality +you cant leave it, and you know it. A man doesnt get a chance like +this twice. Hamilton came to us the other day for the position, and we +refused him, although he had capital and we wouldnt have had to advance +a cent of the money were willing to put up for you. + +But why are you willing to? Justin looked with his bright eyes at the +other. + +Because you are the man we want! Leverich leaned forward eagerly, and +shifted his large frame so as to put each muscle into an easier +position. Dont lets go over that old ground again. Youve had just +the experience in the old company that we need; but its your wide +acquaintance that tells, and its that that were willing to buy. We +believe you can make a market for our goods. + +It is an important step, said the other thoughtfully, to leave a +certainty for an uncertaintynot that I should regard it as an +uncertainty if I took it, he added, with a smile. + +I know its hard to break away and start out for yourself when you have +a family; lots of men go all their lives in a rut because they havent +the courage to take the plunge. But you dont want to work for somebody +else all your life; you dont want to feel that youre wasting all your +best years. By and by it will be too late. And a growing family takes +more money each year, instead of lessyouve got to think of that, too. +Its a terrible thing to be always cramped, and know theres no way out +of it in this world. + +You dont need to tell me all this, Leverich, said Justin coolly. + +No, I know I dont; but I want you to realize that you have your chance +nowone in a million. Im sorry to hurry you, but you see the way were +fixed. Say the word now! Get it off your mind and youll sleep easier. I +know what your word isas good as your bond. _Id_ take it! You can +give any formal decision later. + +Justin still smiled, but he shook his head; though capable of quick +decision when necessary, it was yet impossible to hurry him; his actions +in every case depended on his own thought, and gained no volition from +outside influences, which might indeed retard but could never compel. +Virtually he had concluded to accept Leverichs offer, but he would take +his own time about saying so; he felt the haste of the other man to be +somewhat of an offense against decency. + +Well! Leverich shrugged his heavy shoulders at the bright +impenetrableness that was like a shining armor. We said wed give you +until Wednesday, so of course we will. We will bring the books around +to-night anyway, and go over them, as we planned; you cant afford to +lose any time. And talk to your wife about it, shes a sensible +womanand one who longs, like all the rest of em, for more than shes +got, he added to himself, with cynical satisfaction. + +Martin is watching us now, he continued, waving his hand over toward +the other side of the boat, where a slight, insignificant-looking man +with small features and a large, bulging forehead lifted his hand in an +answering gesture. Youd never think, to look at him, that he was what +he is; he has more brains in his little finger than I have in my whole +head. Leverich spoke with evident sincerity. Im just a plain man of +business, but Fosters a genius. He fixed on you from the start. Hello, +were most in already. + +The crowd from the rear cabin had begun to push through the passageway +and surge to the front of the boat, which was still some distance from +the dock. The man next them folded up his paper, and Justin and Leverich +rose mechanically and stood amid the throng, which became more and more +compact every moment. + +Suddenly both men started as they looked back at the fresh accessions to +the crowd, and pushed sideways, falling behind a little to get in line +with a tall and slender young woman with pink roses in a black hat, and +a dotted veil that emphasized her rich coloring. She raised her head as +a voice beside her said: + +Good evening, Mrs. Alexander! + +Oh, is that you, Mr. Leverich? How do you do? I havent met a soul I +knew on the boat until this moment, and now I see six people. Oh, +Justin! She had faced around as a hand was laid on her arm, and stood +looking up at him with happily surprised eyes, while he smiled back at +her with a slight flush on his own cheek. I was looking for you all the +time, she said. + +The sudden and unexpected meeting of husband and wife has a singular +element in itit is somewhat like unconsciously approaching a mirror in +which one views a stranger who turns out to be ones self. That swift +and impersonal view gives an impression as a whole that can be reached +in no other way. Lois Alexander noticed at once that her husbands +clothes needed brushing, and that the velvet collar of his overcoat was +worn at the edgesshe had hardly seen the coat this year except as he +was putting it on or taking it off. It gave her a slight shock to see +that the tired lines around his eyes made his face look older than she +was accustomed to think of it. He, for his part, experienced the same +slight shock in looking at her; he saw the little imperfections in her +face, and the roses in her hat appeared to him perhaps too pink and +girlish. Yet through all this there was an indescribable thrill of happy +possession and loving admiration of each other, touchingly sweet, and +all the tenderer for the hint of passing years. Among all the men +around, Justin was the king; among all women, she was the most +desirable. + +After the expected sensations of the usual home greeting and the +accustomed kiss, it gave a spice to intimacy to meet perforce as +strangers. She leaned partly against him as she talked to Mr. Leverich, +and he pressed her arm with his strong fingers under cover of her cloak +and made the color come and go in her cheek; her eyes mutely implored +him to stop, and he enjoyed her confusion. Husband and wife looked well +together, in a certain vitality of movement and expression common to +both which made others instinctively turn to observe them. + +I have been trying to discover my husband all the way across, she +complained to Leverich. I was sure that he was on this boat. Why didnt +you look out for me, Justin? + +You didnt say you were going in town to-day, he expostulated. + +How often have I told you to look out for me? I am likely to go in at +any time. I had to get some things for the children. Have youhave you +seen anyone to-day? She spoke disconnectedly, as conscious as a girl of +the disconcerting pressure on her arm. + +Nooh, yes; I saw Eugene Larue this morning, hes back from the other +side. + +Did he say when he would be out? + +No. + +Did you ask him? + +No. The fact is, Lois, I only saw him for a moment and I never thought +about it. + +Oh, it doesnt make any difference. I wanted to speak to you about +Theodosia; Ive had a letter, and shes coming. We are going to have a +young lady as a visitor this winter, she added formally in explanation +to Mr. Leverich, who still stood at her elbow. Shes coming up North to +study music; shes very pretty, I believe, and clever. + +A relation? hazarded Mr. Leverich. + +Yes; shes a young cousin of mineI havent seen her since she was a +child. It will be so pleasant to have a girl in the house. + +You like company, he returned approvingly, my wife does, too; we +always have a houseful. She says I show off better when we have +visitorscant let my angry passions rise. By the way, Alexander, what +time shall I bring the books over to-night? + +Lois Alexanders startled, questioning glance sought her husbands, and +his gave a gravely confidential assent before he answered: + +Any time you say. + +Will eight oclock be too early? + +No, that will suit me very well. + +Well, good-by! He took off his hat in farewell to Lois, and +disappeared in the crowd, as his broad shoulders forced a sinuous +passage through the throng. + +How are the children? Justin asked his wife. + +Theyre all right. She paused, and then said: If you are to look over +those books, I suppose we cant go to the Calenders to-night. + +No. The dark line of the pier struck athwart the dusky light and +divided the windows in two. At least, I cannot, but theres no reason +why you shouldnt go. + +You know that I will not go without you. + +Other women do. + +Well, _I_ will not. + +What a foolish girl! His tone was fond. Then_take_ care! The boat +had bumped into the dock; in the struggling press of the stampeding +crowd, Lois clung to her husbands arm and he strove to ward off the +crush from her. When they were at last over the gang-plank, joining in +the hurrying, straggling procession toward the train, he looked at her +with tender solicitude. + +You shouldnt come out on the boat so late as this. Was it too much for +you? + +Oh, no, no! I do this alone lots of times. She felt so vividly happy +that her breathlessness was hardly an annoyance as they dodged in front +of the incoming drays of another boat and waved aside the impeding +newsboys crying the evening papers. + +She foresaw that they would be separated in the train, and found voice +enough to whisper to him: + +Are you to decide to-night? + +I have virtually decided now. + +To accept? + +Yes. + +Her breath came suddenly; with the monosyllable an electric wave had set +the pulses of both tingling. The spoken word had not failed of its +wonted power; it had at this moment opened a gate hitherto closed. Both +husband and wife felt their feet at last set on the great highroad of +modern romance, the road to wealth, along which ride daily, as of old, +knights in armor, duly caparisoned, with shield and spear, bent, not on +deeds of chivalry, but on one glittering questa grim pathway, veiled +by a golden haze. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +It was a mighty hour. Justin, sitting by the open window with his head +upon his hand, looking out into the night, saw but dimly the pale +shining of the familiar stars, in the search for the rising star of his +own future. It was far on in the small hours, and he had not yet slept, +although he had come up-stairs at twelve oclock with the firm intention +of undressing and going to bed at once. He had, instead, dropped down +into the wicker chair in the unlighted sitting-room to think for a few +momentsand a few momentsand a few moments more. + +The dining-table which he had left was filled with sheets of paper +covered with fine figures, and his mind at first continually reverted to +them, multiplying, subtracting, and correcting with keen facility, and +with infinitesimal changes in the final result, which he knew, +notwithstanding, could be only approximate, no matter how painstakingly +his fancy strove to render it exact. + +After a while, however, other thoughts asserted themselves. The vast +influences of the night were around him as from the deep places of the +universethe depth of dusky gloom, the depth of silence. The window +looked out over a garden, but in this dusky gloom it had lost the +semblance of earth and seemed, instead, but the under part of an +enveloping cloud in which he was the only breathing human life. The +vague dark branches of the trees waving across the lesser darkness spoke +of even deeper mystery in their mute witness to that breath from the +unseen which moved them. + +It was not the problem of the universe of which all this spoke to Justin +Alexander, though as such it had been part and parcel of his questioning +youth. The days when he might have sung with Omar were gone with those +speculative midnight hours, the foregathering with death, the conscious +search for higher meanings, the effort to solve the unknowable; whatever +philosophy was evolved from those journeys into the dark was labeled and +put away on a remote shelf, where the mind occasionally reverted to it +with a sigh of thoughtful possession, but for which there was no longer +any daily use. There was even a chance that on bringing the precious +package out into the modern daylight it might be found to have changed +its color entirely. + +The problem of his own life was what this hour held in its shifting hold +for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines on which he gazed seemed to +prefigure the uncertain boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a +family, the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, even +though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space. + +The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for +six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this +moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing +calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with +a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of +responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, +depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he +had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not +now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years +piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of +it. + +In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed +before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty +longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of +mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest +sympathy. His wifeshe was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her +utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one +who lived in an alien sphere. His childrenhe loved them fondly, but +the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he +could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his rle of +providerneither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the +rest of freedom. + +Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the +inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire +for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his +fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank +under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the +brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or +question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, +but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the +warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under +his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the +long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the +stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, +careless day! + +The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him +to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, +without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked +beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, +and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now +with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched +his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been +freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he +sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His +roaming fancy + +Are you up still? + +Justin startedit was the voice of his wife. He came back to the +familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so +instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; +they became already as though they had never been as he answered: + +Yes; I couldnt have slept if I had gone to bed. + +But youre all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing +in on you! + +Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around +his neck. + +Shut the window at once! Youre so imprudent. You must remember that it +isnt summer now. + +She lent herself to his embrace for a moment. + +Do you know how late it is? + +No, and I dont want to. Lets sit here together for a little while, +Im unspeakably wide awake! Ill make up a little fire for a few minutes +and well have a midnight talk. + +She laughed with evident pleasure. Well! + +He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth, +lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame +brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he +leaned forwardthe light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set +mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her +bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he +turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and +wavered and fell around her. + +It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the +parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic +wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of +social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of +fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with +banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to +abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her +knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with +her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her +pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern +illustration of youthful motherhood. + +She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her +form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft +whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly +coloredher lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed +starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now, +unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual +expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of +herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you. + +She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward +watching the blaze in a new absorption. + +I know youre thinking of the new venture. + +Yes; its a good deal to think of. + +I should say so! She caught her breath admiringly. I listened to you +and those men talking to-night until I couldnt stand it a moment +longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy! + +They wont drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish, said +Justin emphatically. + +But I thought it was all settled that you _could_! + +Oh, yeson paper. Everything looks all right thereand it shall be, +too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow +for differences. I know the machine is goodI dont take any chances on +that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market +all the time to compete with; we havent a monopoly. + +Well, you can make your prices lower than the others, she suggested +brightly. + +Oh, yes, of course, he explained with patience, but if we put prices +too low theres no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though; +weve got to be seen doing business, even if its at a loss. Thats what +the fifty thousands forto tide us over just such a time. + +It is a great deal to have to pay back, she said anxiously, leaning +forward to throw a small log on the fire. I dont like you to saddle +yourself with such a debt. I dont like it! + +What weighed on him mostthe personal care and responsibilitymade no +impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large +ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the +exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a +womans horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate +business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace. + +I wish you could get along without the money. + +Im glad enough to have it, he replied. Rest assured, Lois, if they +didnt think me worth it they wouldnt lend it to methey expect big +interest on their investment. + +And is our living to come out of it, too? + +Oh, yesuntil theres an income. + +How much will you take? + +Oh, no fixed sumjust as little as we can get along with at present. +Well go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our +feet. + +Indeed, Ill economize! She clasped her hands earnestly. There are +only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we cant do +without. After that well need next to nothing. This rug, for +instanceits in rags, Im ashamed to bring anyone up herebut that +wont cost much, and weve _got_ to get one for the front hall; it isnt +decent. And Ill have to buy the childrens winter clothing before it +gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last +years coat looks like a ruffle. + +Oh, of course, get what is needed, said the father resignedly. Some +money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you +can. + +She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back +her lost ground. + +Ah, dont lets leave the fire yet, she pleaded, as he made a motion +to rise. I want to sit here a few minutes more, and its going to blaze +up so beautifully! Its so seldom that we ever really get a chance to +talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this +way. Ive hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmilla man +with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children +and for me you would have left the place long ago. + +If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it +now, he answered gently. + +Yes, I know. Its been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately, +Ive seen how worried you were. Dear, I dont want to be a drag; I want +to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can. + +You always help me. + +Ah, no, I dont; _I_ feel it, though you may not. She paused, and went +on again with a tremulous note in her voice: Justin, I miss you so much +sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadnt seen you +at all! + +You see all there is of me, said Justin tersely. How many times a +year do I go out of an evening without you? + +Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the +servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you +come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I +dont get any chance at all. You _never_ ask me anything, or notice when +I dont feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit +up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill +and I not know it? + +No, I suppose not, said Justin. But Im afraid youll have another +headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois. + +No, I will not! She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a +bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it +filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly +wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had +broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely. + +She tried to speak evenly as she said: I didnt mean that to sound as +if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make +thingsdifferent. + +She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer +to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she +had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain +girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his +gaze. + +It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years +seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it +still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to +act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To +live ones own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest +that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the +large known phenomena of nature. + +Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten +years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed +upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a centurylife must be +nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of +wonder, that, as the years lengthened, ones inner limit of youth +lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of +themselves as young married people with a future all to come. + +The tender proprietorship of Justins caress was more comforting to Lois +than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame +as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his +shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind +preoccupied with divergent claims. + +The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half +nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It +was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always +felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to +walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by +the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toysa +dolls cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the +window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive +stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter +domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of +the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a +heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a +silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more +or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the +wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a +bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor +were picture-books and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to speak of +the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of +man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar +upon his hearthstone. + +[Illustration: _They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of +flame_] + +Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of +character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for +her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to +have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most +unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the +thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her +lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her +estimate of himthe honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of +disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of +those he liked, the love of herall were there; but she was beginning +gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that shining +outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and +preference and habit of which she knew nothingonly as time went on did +she begin to perceive the extent of it. + +Those disappointing moments when they were not in accordwhole days +sometimes dropped out of the weekleft a void which no caresses filled. +It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed. +Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of +those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship of wedlock, are a +thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing +moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but +evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She +could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually +seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some +larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines +became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had +held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was +always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything +was more or less upsetting,marriage, babies, sickness, +housekeeping,years when domestic situations changed their shape daily, +an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an +entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the +servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There +were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone +to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him, +after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end; +when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started +off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did +not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to +find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a +contradiction to everything that she had ever been before. + +The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a +revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night, +was lacking. + +When she spoke again it was to say: When do you take the new place? + +Next month. + +I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will you go in on a +later train in the mornings, dear? + +Ill take an earlier one. + +But then youll come out sooner in the afternoon? + +Ill come out much later. + +Oh, oh! she sighed, with the prevision of long hours of loneliness for +herself. + +At least, you can take more than that miserable two weeks holiday in +the summer. + +My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. You dont +understand; Ive got to work. + +There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and the room had sunk +into partial obscurity. She was the first to speak, as before, +conquering anew the tremulousness in her voice: + +Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next month? + +Yes. How long is she to stay? + +For all winter. Shes to study music, you remember? + +For all winter! He sat up straight with the emphasis of his words. +Why, where will you put her? + +Oh, Ill manage that. But I do wish we had a larger house; this is +maddening sometimes. + +Perhaps well be able to build some day. + +Oh, if we could really have our own house! + +She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that future which is the +summit of good to suburban dwellers, when the contracted space of a +rented house can be changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible +closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout. + +I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the loveliest things +to-day in town. + +Already the thought of brass and mahogany and Oriental rugs, rich in +texture and delicious in coloring, filled her mind. + +To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession of money +meant the opportunity to buy; the possession of yet more money would +mean more opportunity to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the +ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with ease and +promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most American husbands in his +station, the sum spent upon house and family far exceeded in ratio his +own personal expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually +looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented to him +pre-eminently further business possibilities, the power to play +competently in the great game, with the result of a sufficient provision +for his wife and children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at +the thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in this next +year + +Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go to town Friday, or +wait until next month? asked Lois suddenly. + +You had better wait, said Justin, with decision. He rose, and added: +You must go to bed, Lois. + +She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially. + +Good night. + +You are not going to sit up later! + +Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for something in +this paper I forgot to notice earlier. + +He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he must stay for a +brief space beyond the sound of her voice. + +Now, dont wait another moment, or youll get cold. He spoke +authoritatively. The fires almost out. + +He had already turned from her, and was sitting down by the dim flicker +of the newly lighted candle, absorbed once more in figures, with the +newspaper before him. The midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; +both experienced the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows +time-worn and trivial conversation. + +Lois pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she left the room; +but after a slight interval she returned with a gliding step and softly +placed a fresh log upon the dull red embers of the dying fire, and +fanned them noiselessly until a flame leaped out again, holding her +white draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling across +her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful self-forgetting smile +shone out and became a part of the light around him before she vanished +once more through the doorway. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, plush-covered seat of the +sleeping-car, with her hands folded in her lap, looking out of the +window at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green rows of +cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of scrub-oak and pine, +dotted here and there with gray cabins, around which negroes, little and +big, in scanty garments were grouped to watch the train go by; +occasionally it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a +wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced by no name for +the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic legend, Southern Express +Company, on a swinging board at one end. It was before these ultimate +days when factories are springing up all over the new South, and she had +not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their staring yellow +frames by the side of the muddy streams; only the cotton-fields and the +scrub-oaks ran along by the train, with the view of the blue mountains +here and there, and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had +never seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world outside +of her home. + +There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, as that +of the girl who is supposed to be contented with the little rounds of +household life. Dosias mother had died when she was a small child, but +so much love and care had been given her by relatives and by her father, +a professor in a small college and a gentle and good man, that she had +never felt the loss. When she was twelve years old her father married +again, and, on account of his failing health, they moved from their home +in the West to the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small +income which he already possessed, to engage in some industry suitable +to his limited powers; but in the enervating climate he gradually lost +all ambition and business habits. He became yellow in complexion and +slouching as to appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than +before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the loungers around +the village store or the new people from the North who came to learn the +methods pertaining to cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything +should be done. + +He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always placid and +amiable, and only regretting, as he continually affirmed, that he could +not provide for the family as he should. The children, of whom there +were four by this second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, +who was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, and almost as +self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother had from the first +attached herself to Dosia, whom she treated even at that early stage of +life less as a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all +emergencies. + +Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period in her existence +the unthinking content of childhood had left her. It was natural to live +in the small, poorly built house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with +broken fences, with small children to dress and care for and a baby to +be tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, with a +continual desultory striving after a refinement of dress and living that +was never accomplished. It was a matter of course to be always clearing +up, yet never in order, and to be always economizing temporarily in +view of the stated remittance which never could be used for paying +anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia was a sweet-natured +child, affectionate and helpful, with a healthy constitution which made +work unnoticeable, and she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned +way according to the views of her elders, without criticism or comment. +Her education, although desultory, had been fairly good, depending +partly on teachers who came from the North and stayed in Balderville for +their health, and partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well +as culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he felt like it; +for that, as everything else, was a matter of inclination with him and +not of duty. She was fond of reading, and had also somewhat of a talent +for music, which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results +with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she had been +well taught at the beginning. + +Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent order that +obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors was bad or good, +according to the year, like the peaches or cotton. With some of these +visitors Dosia formed eager, transitory friendships, but with others +there could be no assimilation. There were a few nice families settled +in the place, more or less bound together by a community of interest +centering in Balderville and the future of their children, who were +usually sent away to school when half grown. + +Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing faculties of its +owna terrible clear-sightedness, for one thing, and a black-and-white +ruled-out sense of justice and injustice; it brought an absolutely new +sense of values to Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to +dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked upon as +entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and stepmother, were +really the inevitable expressions of law. She saw that the true +character of her parents was quite different from their own idea of it; +that they would never change materially, and therefore, in the very +nature of things, their fortunes could never change materially; they +would always be going a little faster or a little slower on a down +grade. She wondered at the exhaustless capacity of complacently +believing in worn fallacies which her young eyes saw pitilessly as such. +Her stepmother still looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as +a successful and energetic man of business for the moment only disabled +by his failing health, and believed herself to be always on the point of +managing the little money they had with superhuman economy, so that it +would cover all household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could +never be more money, and that what there was must always slip away. This +knowledge laid the future waste and rendered effort futile. What was the +use, for instance, of putting cushions on the lounge over the place +where there was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new +one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of pretending that +when the cracked and heterogeneous plates and dishes were replaced the +table would be properly set once more? They never would be replaced. + +If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered +her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a +little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and +there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to +the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the +older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be +spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The +young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and +childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always +said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they went +together, and arrangements were made in view of this known fact +whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never gone with +anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor +staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and +picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked +and took care of the children, and read, and found her fathers +walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went +on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why +should she not be? + +[Illustration: _Theodosia_] + +But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after +the days work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children +played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each +other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were +contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own +discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself +which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she +was nobly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didnt know +how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the +advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had +listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was +ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served +after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living. + +Many a nightlike many another girl!Dosia sat in the window of her +shelving attic room, bathed in the golden moonlight, with her hair +falling on her shoulders and her hands clasped before her, a picture for +none to see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were around her. +The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! In vain she tried to stem +it. She longed inexpressibly for that outer world, of which she had +read, where youth was a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, +clever, self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old rgime +where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to learn more +about many things,she longed to study music,but she felt no +inspiration and no desire for the life of an artist; she was, in fact, +just a girl, who longed with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less +intensely, for the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, +the excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little daily +delights, andlove. She dimly discerned unknown glories that made her +breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed of some one in the far future who +would be very good and very noble, whose love would hold her to +everything that was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove +herself extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, and whose +hand on hers would set her heart beating. She imagined pouring out her +heart to him,that heart which seemed to be forever shut in her breast +now, with none to understand it, none to care,going to him with all +these doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the blessedness +of his response. You darling, he would say, dont you know I was +loving you all the time? We neither of us knew each other, to be sure, +but the love was there all the same; it had existed since the beginning +of the world. + +She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy which affects not +only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, and which does not need +iron as a curative power so much as a legitimate and healthy excitement. +Even Mrs. Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and showed +listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors had openly +commented on the fact; she said placidly that she was really worried +about Dosia, and wished that she could have a change. And then one of +those impossible, wonderful things happened which alter the whole +surface of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia was to +go to New York to study music, and spend the winter with a married +cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of the suburbs. + +Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, dressed in a new suit +of blue serge, which had been sent from Atlanta, to fit her measure, +with the rest of her traveling outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, +with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the +seat, and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the +fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess. + +Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of +choicebleared and shapeless in effect from much making over, as +purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for +such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she +almost felt as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with +the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted perfume +of the sude gloves was subtly intoxicating. She took furtive glimpses +of herself in the glass panel beside her, and the sight filled her with +a delighted wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so +much like other people. + +It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her face; she had that +exaggerated idea of the importance of dress which belongs to people who +have never been able to exercise their taste or fancy for +itparticularly those who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet +was like a picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she cared +little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthfuljust a girls +face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, when the color varied in +it with the moment. She had blue eyes, a good mouth with a short upper +lip, white teeth, and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert +look in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; her +slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her lips parted +unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, with her varying color, +gave her a charm. + +But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless expression +of extreme youth which experience has never touched, which has nothing +to remember and nothing to forgetthe typical fair white page, still +unwritten upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday. + +When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family +group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, +with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn +hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and +unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a +large brass safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted +children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, +brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing +kisses with the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The elders +had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled remorsefully at the +thought; she had been so shamelessly glad to go! And yet, she did love +them. Mingled with a sense of kindness was also a strange little +disappointmentshe felt that when they turned homeward with their backs +to the train they would let her slip out of their lives with the same +ease with which they had accustomed themselves to let other things go, +with a selfish inertia too deep to feel anything long. Only the +babylittle Rolfhe would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a +while, for his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her arms +yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of latent motherhood +unknown to her placid stepmother. It was characteristic of this girl, +who was tired of taking care of children, that the fact of there being a +two-year-old baby also at her cousins house seemed now its crowning +attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations about the +darling. + +After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of traveling, +blurred out the past for her. She was journeying to the life that was +hers by right; the luxurious appointments of the car, her own new +elegance, began to seem a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, +indeed, she had been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card +offered her by the white-aproned colored waiter and selected her dinner +as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing it that she thought +he had forgotten it; but at last he brought the meal, and she ate it +from the table which he had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; +there was an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act +which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence. +Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, and took off her +jacket, and made herself comfortable, as she saw others had done. The +car was by no means crowded, and she had seen from the first that there +was no one who could serve as a peg to hang a romance ononly +middle-aged women and men, and a mother with half-grown children. She +fell to wondering, as she had done many times before, what her cousins +would be like; she was prepared to love them dearly. With the +unconscious egotism of her age, everything in this new life was to +revolve around her. The other players were accessoriesshe was the star +performer. + +The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and dark, of green and +shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered white houses and rounded +overhanging slopes that shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamedand +dreamed. Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush +and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and impalpable +cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the berths were made up, +people sitting the while in tired, silent groups in other sections, +holding on to cloaks and hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind +the curtains. Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the +brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and then lay down +at last without removing any clothing, with both hands tucked under her +soft cheek and her eyes staring before her. There had been a bustle of +walking to and fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while +all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward a little when +the train went suddenly around a curve. Gradually those wide-open blue +eyes began to close; she seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on +pillows of roseate down, between waking and sleeping; and then_God in +heaven_! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, helpless +terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching her, beating her +against the planks, jamming her into awful darkness as if she were a +creature without bone or sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself +among the other voices shrieking. A plunge, and thennothing. + +The night was inky black, and the wind that swept down the gorge brought +an occasional raindrop with it. Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long +while after that she heard voices, then a mans hand was passed over her +face and a voice close above her said, It is a woman, and added, +bending still nearer to her, Can you speak? + +Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; instead, she broke +into a helpless sobbing in which there were no tears. The man spoke to +some one near, and she became aware that there were other sounds of +talking and distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light +twinkled and disappeared. + +Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting her head gently, +placed something soft under it. His touch was compassionate, and his +tone still more so as he said: + +Are you in much pain? + +She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke for her. She +wanted to question him, but could not. He seemed to divine her thought. + +Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you wonder where you are. +There has been a terrible accidentthe trestle gave way, and one car +fell down here; the others, I believe, smashed farther up somewhere. +People are coming to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do +now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do just as I tell +you? Move your right footyes, therenow your leftnow this armnow +the other. Why, thats brave of you!as she tried to raise herself a +little. Perhaps you will be able to stand soon. He broke off suddenly +with a groan: I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to Heaven I +had! but theres not a drop left in the flask. + +The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, and the sounds +of moving and confusion around increased. The lights Dosia had seen +above seemed to get nearer, and then twinkled down close to the wreck; +but even then, in the opaque blackness of the night, they remained only +isolated points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they +dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered and went backward +and forward; with them came more voices and stumbling feet, sounds half +swallowed by the depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of +wind. + +Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the fleeting flash +of a lantern above her revealed that there was no one beside her; it was +like being dropped again into nothingness. She did not know how long she +lay there. With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, +though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised her to a +sitting position, and held her there, with her head resting against the +shoulder of this new-found friend. Drink thisall of it. I want to see +if you can stand after a few moments, and perhaps walkthere are so few +stretchers. Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder. + +No, I will not leave youhe spoke as one would to a little child, as +she made a faint, terrified motion to hold his armI will not leave +you. I will take you every step of the way. You are a girl, arent you? +Were you alone on the train? Had you no friends with you? + +She whispered with some difficulty, No one. + +You are perhaps spared much. There was a silence. Presently he said +gently: We must not wait here too long; we must follow the +lanternssee, they are going. You can stand; now try and walk. Give me +your handthat way. Lean on me. Take one stepnow another. Come! Dont +be afraidyou _must_. + +With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost carrying her, she +essayed to walk. Shaking at each step pitifully at first, then growing +stronger, with one hand locked in his, she found herself ascending the +rocky path of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The +lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel into which the +light was walled solidly. He was leading her along the railroad-ties. As +she stumbled from time to time, she became formlessly conscious that he +winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from +falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering +grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such +a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly. + +He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously. +Whats the matter? + +Im hurting you. + +Not more than I can stand. Dont stop to talk about it; we mustnt fall +behind. Hold my hand fast. + +The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the +wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were +all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, +endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the +protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding handa strong, clean touch, +that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With +her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that +she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he +knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow +as one in the unspoken comforting of trust. + +Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses +hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them. +Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were +others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, +carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with +whom she had exchanged no word of farewell. + +She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she +lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But +through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all +the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, +unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of +which is her greatest good on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had +begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession +of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing +of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at +an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in +consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had +been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory +and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It +was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce +in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction +which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he +propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; +his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of +regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry +to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow +any more. + +But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a +man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty +thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly +pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that +character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he +insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his +overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had +certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is +first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did +not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated +itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his +closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in +it. It is the transmutation of metal into the bloodthe revivifying +power which the seekers after the philosophers stone recognized so +thoroughly. + +He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, +and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a +newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel +undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by +with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager +look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening +condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the +wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and +concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energyan +energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as +a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it. + +His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall +Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries +which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and +filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, +being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small +wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used +to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls +in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they +walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and +damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one +of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river. + +As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, +and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly +did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, +loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the +entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes +of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard +the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, +moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street +came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and +looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward +and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, +pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out +around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, +but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories +there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron +railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; +basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted +vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; +attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in +the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, +was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering +high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those +below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich. + +Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differencesthe +houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses +again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began +to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships +stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that +attracted Justins particular attention, wedged in as it was between the +taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen +by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; +the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrancea relic +of bygone dayshad only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black +hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so +near the street that it was easy to see into the front rooman interior +so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it. + +The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a +brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing +the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly +covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps +stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken +remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth +sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give +that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who +gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen +and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the +human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a +momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up, +half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye +of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered +suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had +turned into this street from Broadway. + +The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comradeship +which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and +hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was +now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent +reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of +the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name +conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily, +and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the +point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in +response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling +his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of +proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome +pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning. + +The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off +near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side +were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the +lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory; +from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery. +The larger parts of the instrumentthe copper tubing and the steel +barswere bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper +functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were +manufactured. + +The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine +invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a +manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly +to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during +which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New +York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in +construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various +cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment. +Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of +timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, +seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard +Typometerso called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of +elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it. +The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite +attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They +said all it needed now was push. + +Thousands of little books entitled Sixty Seconds with the Typometer +had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive +brevity, and in large black print that could be read without glasses, +Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you +could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers, +in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate. + +The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the +renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its +future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory +was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been +associated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear +ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly +man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had +been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the +requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justins services +would have been needed at all. + +As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman +stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a +slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that +drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, +muscular arms. + +To Justins pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of +pleasure in his eyes: + +Good morning, sir. Im glad to see you here so early. Youve perhaps +heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati. + +No, said Justin; I came up here first. Thats good news, Bullen. + +Yes, sir. Ive made a list of the stock well need as soon as we can +get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. Ill want to +see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men. + +Very well, said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the +office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the +assistant manager. + +And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander, he said. + +They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one, +it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified +ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this +first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin +and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had +weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He +meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best. +If orders came in every day like thisand why should they not? if not +now, at least in the near future + +The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell +of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as +one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by +the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully +absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the +master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been +furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the +store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it. +Afterwards + +By the way, Harker, he asked once, in an interval of waiting, what is +the concern across the street? + +Its much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander. + +Justin looked up, surprised. I never knew that. + +Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; its the +Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after a fashionnot as +good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs horribly after youve worked it +for a while. Theyve got one in the billiard-room around the corner. + +And this Mr. Caterhas he been in the business long? + +He was here when we came, two years ago. + +Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a decent place for +luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was hardly surprised, when he +seated himself by a little white table in a small, rather dark room, to +look up and recognize opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L. +Cater. + +I was wondering how soon youd find this place out, said the latter. +He spoke with a Southern drawl. You dont get a very large repertoire +here, but what they do give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and +thats an art. And its clean. + +Yes, said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to be usually +spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more social feeling toward +those who let him alone, but even the shadows of this golden day were +translucent. + +I reckon you know who I amAngevin L. Cater. Angevins a queer name, +isnt it? Frenchseveral generations back. + +To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was required. After a +moment Mr. Cater began again: + +Perhaps you think its strangemy speaking to you in this way. Of +course Ive seen you coming to Number 270, and knew that you were taking +charge there, but thats not the whole of it. Im from Georgiagot a +wife and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville now. He paused +to give this impressive fact full weight. Youve some relatives there, +havent you, by the name of Linden? + +My wife has, said Justin, with new attention. + +Well, I reckon I heard of you some this fall when I was home. Miss +Theodosia was talking of spending the winter North with you, she asked +me if I knew Mr. Justin Alexander, and I had to tell her no. I didnt +think Id meet up with you so soon. Heard from her lately? + +We expect Miss Linden to-morrow, said Justin. How is Mr. Linden +getting on? We havent heard very good accounts of him lately. + +Oh, Lindens a mighty fine man; he aint successful, thats all. I find +a heap of mighty fine men that aint successful, dont you? I dont +think its anything against a man that he aint successful. Besides, old +man Linden aint got his health; you cant do anything if you havent +got your health. His wifes a mighty fine ladypretty, too; but she +aint much on dressin up; stays at home and takes care of her children. +And Miss Dosiawell, Miss Dosias a peach. Talented, tooI tell you, +she can bang the ivories! But shes been kinder pinin lately; I reckon +she needs a changethough a change isnt always what its cracked up to +be. Ive found that out, havent you? I changed into a New York business +two years ago, and its taken all my strength to buck up against it till +now. I reckon maybe itll carry me along all rightnow. + +Youre in the same line that I am, I understand, said Justin, who had +been eating while the other talked. + +Why, yes, you might call it that, I guess both machines started in +Connecticut. A cousin of mine owned one, he said Warford stole his idea +and got it patented firstI dont know. When he died he left me what +money he had, and I took up the concern. Ive got a Yankee side to me as +well as a Southern side; sometimes I get tuckered out tryin to combine +em. + +You say that trade is looking up now? asked Justin. + +Well, yes, it is. The public is beginning to learn the value of time as +recorded by the timoscript. His eyes twinkled. Our machine is put +together better than the Warford. I feel it my duty to say that, Mr. +Alexander. Its simpler, for one thingthere aint so many little cogs +to catch and get out of order. No complex mechanism; a child can run +itthats what my circulars say. I believe in advertising, same as you; +I dont object to your booming trade. The more people there are, now, +who know there is a time-machine, the more therell be to find theyve +had a long-felt want for one, no matter what you call it. Andyou +shouldnt hurry over your luncheon so, Mr. Alexander, for Justin had +thrown down his napkin and was rising. + +Ive got to be back at the office by two, said Justin, glancing at the +clock, which showed five minutes of the hour. + +Oh, you can walk it in three minutes; but of course youre not down to +that yet. Im glad to have met up with you, sir, and I hope to see you +often. I reckon this towns big enough for two of a kind. + +Thank you, said Justin, glad to escape. He had been telling himself +during the conversation that he would take care to avoid Mr. Angevin L. +Caters favorite haunt for the future, but he was surprised to find a +change gradually stealing over him after he had left the man. There are +some persons, distinctly agreeable at first, whose absence materializes +an unexpected aversion to their further acquaintance; others, whose +company one has found tedious, leave a wholesome flavor, after all, +behind them. Mr. Cater appeared to be of the latter class. Justin found +himself smiling with real kindness once or twice as he thought of his +opposite neighbor. + +But there was little time for turning aside during the afternoonthe +evening as well as the morning were component parts of that golden day. +The orders that came in gave a wonderful effect of luck, although they +were largely the legitimate outcome of well-planned efforts. Justin +thought the work of the last six months was bringing its fulfillment +now, but this clear stream of accomplishment showed him the way to a +mighty ocean. Power, power, power! The sense of it was in his +finger-ends as he focused his mind on world-embracing schemes; with that +impelling current of strength, he could have turned even failure to +success, and he knew it. + +The hours were all too short for transacting the business that had to be +done, and for all the consultations as to ways and means. It would take +some time to put these preparations on a larger scale. + +Justin was ready to leave at six oclock, with a bundle of price-lists +under his arm to look over when he got home. The last mail was handed to +him just as he was locking his desk. + +There is no use in my looking over these to-night, Harker, he said. +You can get at them the first thing in the morning. I will be down even +earlier than to-day. Stay His eye had caught sight of an envelope +with the name of a well-known Chicago firm on it. He tore it open, ran +his eye rapidly over the contents, and then handed it, with a gesture as +of abdication, to Harker. The bookkeeper was the first to break the +silence. + +I thought we were getting along pretty rapidly to-day, he said, but +it seems that we havent even started. This tops all! Well have to get +a big move on, Mr. Alexander. Theyre giving us very short time. + +Yes, said Justin. He lingered irresolutely, and then laid down his +papers with the hat which he held ready to put on, and went over to the +safe. He took from it five new ten-dollar bills and tucked them into his +waistcoat pocket. They sent a glow to his heart, for they were intended +as a little gift to his wife; it seemed to him that this last good +fortune had given him the right to make her a visible sharer in it. + +As he ran up the steps of his home, he collided with a small boy who was +holding a bicycle with one hand and proffering a yellow envelope through +the open doorway with an outstretched arm. Lois was taking it. She and +Justin read the telegram at the same moment, before it fell fluttering +to the ground between them, as both hands dropped it. + +I cannot possibly go, he said, staring at her. + +Oh, Justin! I will, thensome one _must_. + +No, no, _you_ cant; thats nonsense. Great heavens! for this to come +at such a time! He broke off again, staring helplessly before him. +Leverich was in St. Louis, Martin at his home ill. Why didnt the girl +start last week, as she intended? + +Oh, the poor childdont blame _her_. The accident must have been so +terrible! + +Yesyes, indeed. He sat down in the hall chair, while his wife signed +the telegraph-book which the boy incidentally held open for her as he +chewed gum. When she finished, she saw that Justin was pouring over the +time-table in an evening paper; he laid it down to say: + +If I start back for town in ten minutes I can catch the eight-thirty +train south, and get home again to-morrow night or the morning after, if +Theodosia is able to travel. That will only make me lose one day. One +day! He shook his head in bitter impatience. + +Oh, I hate to have you go in this way! Shall I send word to the office +for you? + +No; Ill write some telegrams on the way in. Ill run up-stairs and put +a few things in the bag, and kiss the children good nightI hear them +calling. He put his hand in his pocket and hurriedly drew out the crisp +roll of bills, and looked at them ruefully. + +I brought this money for you, Lois, but Ill have to take it with me, +Im afraid, for I might run short. He put his arm around her for a +brief instant, in answer to her exclamation. No, dont get me anything +to eat; I havent time, I tell you. Ill get what I want later, on the +train. In the strong irritation which he was curbing he felt as if he +would never want to eat again. He was in reality by nature both kind and +compassionate, but the worst sting of trouble lies often in the fact +that it is so inopportune. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +Are we near New York? + +Yes, said Justin, smiling encouragement at his young companion. He +stood up and took down from the rack above them Dosias jacket, which +had been reclaimed from the wreck soaked and torn, and a boys cap in +lieu of her missing hat. + +You had better put these on now, and then you can rest again for a +little while before we have to move. + +It was unavoidable that after the enforced journey the sight of Dosias +white face and imploring eyes should have filled him with a rush of +tender compassion which completely blotted out the previous reluctance +from his memory. Few men spend their time regretting past stages of +thought, and he had naturally accepted her tremulous thankfulness for +his solicitude. + +After the long day of travel in Justins company, the color had begun to +return faintly to Dosias lips and cheeks. She was also growing to feel +a little more at home with him; he had seemed too much a stranger and +she had been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. +He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in numberless ways, and +thoughtful of her comfort, and always smiled encouragingly when he +looked at her. Now, at the journeys end, he began to talk, in a secret +restlessness which he could not own. His mind had been busy all day with +the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but as he neared home he +could not shake off a haunting premonition of something unpleasant to +come. + +Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting the new +cousin, he said. + +Will they? asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. But they will be +looking out for you as well as for me. + +Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. But I was wrong in +saying that both children would be up, for it will be nearly seven when +we reach the house, and they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be +there. I hope you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at +our house. + +I love children, said Dosia, with the solemnity of a profession of +faith. + +I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl who has her +hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and the rest of it straggles +around in light wisps, or is gathered into an inconceivably small +pigtail at the back of her neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, +little white teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and +wisdom, because at the age of six she is the eldest daughterand that +means a great deal, you know. + +Oh, said Dosia, I am an eldest daughter. She choked, momentarily, +as she thought of the family at home. Was it only last night that you +started for me? she asked, after a pause during which she had looked +hard out of the car-window. + +Yes; Ive made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky that we could +catch that eight-thirty express this morning; if we hadnt it would have +put us back nearly twenty-four hoursand that would have been bad, he +added under his breath. + +Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one day, said Dosia +timidly. She felt somehow away outside of his inner thought, as if she +had no inherent place in his mind at all. You are just starting in +business, arent you? + +Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new venturesDosia and +the typometer appear on the scene at the same moment, starting out on a +career together; and for this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is +all. I hope well both be equally successful. + +Yes, indeed. She responded to his smile, and tried to rally her +failing powers. + +I am very glad I went for you. He regarded her with anxiety. You +could not have made the journey alone. + +Oh, I could havebut I am so glad you came! said Dosia. She leaned +against the window, with closed eyes, to resther wan face, her dress, +crumpled and stained, the negligence of her hair, which she had been +unable to arrange properly, and her air of fatigue making a pitiful +contrast to the girl who had started out so gayly on her travels in her +trim attire two days before. Now, as in many another moment of silence, +she felt once more the hurtling fall, the pressure of darkness, and the +ravages of the rain and wind; the nightmare horror of the wreck was upon +her; only the remembered clasp of a hand held her reason firm. She had +spent half the day in thinking of that unknown friend, and the thought +seemed to put her under some obligation of high and pure living, in a +cloistered gratitude. A girl who had been saved in that way ought to be +worthy of it. Some day or othersome dayit must be meant that she +should meet him again and tell him what his help had been to her. She +imagined herself engaged in some errand of mercysupporting the +tottering footsteps of an old woman as she crossed a crowded street, or +carrying a little sick child, or kneeling by a fever-touched bedside in +a tenement-house, or encouraging a terror-stricken creature through +smoke and fire. She would meet him thus, and when he said, How good and +brave you are! she might look up and say: I learned it from you. Do +you remember the girl you helped the night the train was wrecked? I am +she. And when he asked, How did you know it was I? she would answer: +By the tones of your voice; I would know that anywhere. And then he +would take her hand again + +Her eyes ached with unshed tears at the lost comfort of it. She tried to +see his form through the blur of darkness that had enveloped it,a +swinging step, a square set of the shoulders, an effect of strong young +manhood,and she pictured his face as noble and beautiful as his care +for her. Her reverie passed through different grades. She found herself +after a while idly scanning Justins face and wondering if it embodied +all that was high and good to her cousin Lois; after one was married a +long time, say six or seven years, did it still matter how a man looked? +She felt herself a little in awe of his keen blue eyes, in spite of his +kindness; she thought she preferred a dark man. + +She clung to Justins arm at the crossings and ferry, and hardly heard +his words, bewildered by the unaccustomed sights and sounds and the +weakness of her knees. Her feet slipped on the cobblestones, the +hurrying people made her dizzy, and the electric lights danced before +her eyes. + +As they were standing on the boat, two men came up to speak to Justin; +she gathered that they had heard of the accident and of his journey from +Mrs. Alexander at the whist club the night before, and stopped now to +make courteous inquiries. One, who was short and stout, with a pleasant +if commonplace face, passed on, after his introduction to Dosia; but the +other turned back, as he was following, to say: + +By the way, I see that there was a fire in your new quarters to-day, +Alexander. + +A fire! For Heavens sake, Barr + +Oh, I dont think it amounted to much; theres just a line in the +evening paper about it. Here, read for yourselffire confined to one +floor, machinery slightly damaged. Insured, werent you? + +Oh, yes, yesthat isnt the point now. We cant afford to be kept back +a minute! Im glad you told me; I must goI must go back at once and +see for myself. He stopped and looked hopelessly at Dosia. + +Short as the journey was now, he could not let her continue it by +herself; yet every fiber in him was quivering in his wild desire to get +over to the scene of disaster. He looked at his informant, who, in his +turn, was regarding the girl beside Justin. + +I can go on by myself, said Dosia, divining his thought, and wondering +when this terrible journey would ever end. Truly, I can. I know you +want to go and see about the fire; please, please do! Oh, please! + +Barr, will you take charge of Miss Linden? asked Justin abruptly. He +did not particularly like Barr, but this was an emergency. Will you +take her to Mrs. Alexander? + +I will, indeed, said the newcomer, with responsive earnestness. + +Very well, then; Ill go back on this boat. Ill be out on a later +train, tell Lois. He started to make his way to the other end of the +boat, to be in readiness for the return trip, and turned back once more +to give the girl her ticket; then he was lost to sight, and Theodosia +was left, for the third time, on the hands of an unknown man. + +This one only spoke to give her the necessary directions as they joined +the usual rush for the train, and refrained from talking, to her great +relief, after he had settled her comfortably in the car for the last +half-hour of traveling. She leaned against the window-casing, as before, +as far away from him as possible, suddenly and wretchedly aware of her +dilapidated appearance and the boys cap that covered the fair hair +curling out from under it. Her cheeks were whiter than ever, and the +corners of her mouth had the pathetic droop of extreme fatigue. + +She looked, without knowing it, very young, very forlorn, and very +frightened, and the hand in which she held the ticket given her by +Justin trembled. She was morbidly afraid that this new person would +question her as to the accident, about which she shrank from speaking; +but after a while, encouraged by his silence, she tried to turn her +thoughts by stealthily observing him. + +If her friend of the voice and hand of the night before had been only a +tall blur in the darkness, the man beside her was effectively concrete. +Neither tall nor large, he gave an impression of strength and vitality +in the ease and quickness of his motions, which bespoke trained muscles. +She decided that he was rather oldperhaps thirty. Dark-skinned, +black-haired, with a thin face, a low forehead, deep-set eyes, a high, +rather hooked nose, and a mustache, he was somewhat of the Oriental +type, although, as she learned later, a New Englander by birth and +heritage. Dosia was not quite sure whether the effect was pleasing or +the reverse; there seemed to be something about him different from the +other men she had seen, even in his clothing, although it was plain +enough. + +Interspersed with these observations were the increasing throbs of +homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Kind as Justin had been, +she had felt all the time outside of his thought and affection. This new +companion had shown consideration for her; she was grateful for it, but +she was unprepared to have him lean suddenly toward her, as a tear +trembled perilously on her lashes, and say, with twinkling eyes: + +I beg your pardon, but do I look like him? + +Likelike whom? asked Dosia, in amazement. + +Like a person to be approved of. + +I havent considered the subject, said Dosia, with swift dignity. + +Ah, you see, its the reverse with me. As soon as Mrs. Alexander told +me she was expecting you, my mind was filled with visions of a sweet +young thing from the South. All sweet young things from the South have +dreams; mine was to embody yours. And when I saw you, I said to +myselfI beg your pardon, do you think I am getting too personal, on +such short acquaintance? + +Yes, answered Dosia, dimpling in spite of herself, very much too +personal. She turned her head away from him, that she might not see +those sparkling, quizzical eyes so close. + +Very well; I will finish the sentence to-morrow, as you suggest. In the +meantime, let me ask you if you have ever made a collection of +conductors thumbs? + +No! said Dosia, in astonishment, turning around again to face him. + +I am told that there is a great deal of character in them; it is given +by the broad, free movement of punching tickets. I have thought of +collecting thumbs for purposes of studyin alcohol, of course. But why +do you look so surprised? + +I am surprised that you have no collection already, said Dosia, with +spirit; you seem to be so enterprising. + +He shook his head sadly. No. How little you know me! Im not +enterprising in the least; I have no heroic virtues, Im onlyloving. + +Oh! cried Dosia, and stopped short in a ripple of merriment that was +more invigorating than wine, and that brought a rush of color to her +cheeks. + +No? well, not until the day after to-morrow, then, if you say so. +Youre so very, very good to me, Miss Linden; its not often I find +anyone so considerate as you are. And have you come up North to make +your entrance into society? + +I have come North to study music, said Theodosia impressively. + +Music! Ah, there you have me. He spoke with a new soberness. + +Do you like it? + +I like it almost better than anything else in the worldtoo much, and +yet not enough, after all. He shook his head with a quick, somber +gesture. Ill help you with the music, if youll let me. Did you notice +how very quickly we became acquainted? Yes? I know now why; it puzzled +me at first. It was the music in you to which I respondedI can tell +you just what little song of Schuberts your smile is from, if youll +give me time. + +No, said Dosia, it isnt from Schubert at all, and youll never find +the key-note to it, so you neednt try. She could not help daring a +little, in her girlishness. + +He laughed. Oh, I shall make it my business to find out. For what else +what I constituted your guardian at the beginning of your career? And +its so good of you to say that I can come to-morrow and pour out my +heart to you! Shall it be at five? No, please dont trouble to answer; I +like to look at your ear in that positionits so pearly. Too personal +again? Then let us converse about your Old Kentucky Home. + +It isnt in Kentucky, interpolated Dosia desperately, but there was no +stopping him. He was so irrelevantly absurd that she succumbed at last +entirely, and hardly knew when they left the train; when they walked up +the path to her cousins door, they were both laughing causelessly and +irresponsibly, in delightful comradeship. + +He turned to Dosia after he had rung the bell and said, Good night. + +Arent you coming in to see my cousin? + +Oh, yes; but this is our farewell. Please make it as touching as you +can. + +She looked up frankly as she gave him her hand and said: + +Thank you for taking charge of me. + +And making a fool of myself? It was in a good cause, at any rate. But +what I wanted you to say was + +She did not hear, for the door had opened, and he only waited a moment +inside the house to explain her husbands absence to Mrs. Alexander. The +news arrested her greeting to Dosia, whom she held tentatively by the +hand as she repeated: + +Justin went back to the fire! Oh, Im so sorry! Do you think that it +was very bad? + +The paper said not. + +It must be out now, anyway. Im so disappointed that he did not come +home, and I have such a nice little dinner. Will you not stay, Lawson? + +Thank youI wish I could. There was a penetrative, lingering flash of +those still quizzical eyes at Dosia as he made his adieus, and then he +was gone. Why should she feel alone? + +Her cousins arms were at last around her in welcome, the warmer for +being deferred; and the little Zaidee, whom she would have known from +Justins description of her, was standing first on one tiptoe and then +on the other, waiting to be kissed before going off to bed, as she +announced. From above came the sound of small running feet, and a +childs voice calling: + +Cousin DosiaI want to see my Cousin Dosia! A bare foot and leg +surmounted by a fluttering scrap of white raiment was thrust through the +balusters, followed by a protesting scream as his nurse heavily pursued +the fugitive with upraised voice: + +Coom back, Reginald, coom back! There was the noise of a scuffle as +Dosia, with her escort, laughingly ascended the stairs, to elicit a +shriek of terror and a rear view of the mercurial Reginald in full +flight for the nursery door, which banged after him, and behind which he +still raised his voice, to the shrill accompaniment of the nurse. + +_Ill_ go in and keep him quiet, said Zaidee reassuringly, in answer +to her mothers look of appeal, and she also disappeared beyond the +prison bars, after a whisk of her short crisp pink skirt, and a smile at +Dosia in which her little white teeth gleamed in an infantile glee that +only accentuated her air of preternatural capability. + +Her cousins kindly hands helped Dosia to remove the traces of travel, +when she had definitely refused the offer pressed upon her to be +undressed and go to bed and have her dinner brought up to her. It was +sweet to be in feminine care once more, and be pitied for the terrors +she had undergone, and feel the bond of relationship assert itself in +spite of the fact that the cousins had not seen each other since Dosias +early childhood. She did not want to be alone up-stairs, and sat instead +in Justins place at the table, clad in a soft silken tea-gown of Lois +that was in itself restful, trying to eat and drink and keep up her part +in the conversation about her journey and the absent members of the +family. Changes had crowded so upon poor Dosia that she felt as if she +were living in a kaleidoscope that rattled her every minute or two into +a new position; the glittering table and her cousins form would +presently dissolve, and leave her perhaps out in the crowded, unknown +streets, with wild-eyed faces pressing near her. + +After all, she only changed to an arm-chair in the little drawing-room, +with her head against a cushion and her feet on a foot-stool, and her +cousin still beside her, pulling back the window-curtains once in a +while to take a peep outside for her missing husband; in spite of the +real kindness of her welcome, Dosia felt a certain preoccupation in it. +Her coming was only accessory to the real importance of his, when she +herself should have been the event; the warmth of heart which she had +expected to feel toward her cousin somehow seemed to fail of expression +in this attitude. At the same time, Lois was also conscious of a lack of +response, a dullness, in Theodosia. Perhaps the likeness of relationship +was answerable for a certain reserve of manner, a formality which +neither knew how to break then or at a later time, and which was to last +until the barriers were swept away by a mighty flood; but the real cause +of the lack of sympathy lay in something much deeper. The strong thought +of self is inevitably insulatingit is as restrictive of human contact +as a live wire. Dosia, whose young life had all been spent in +unselfishness, was experiencing unexpectedly the other swing of the +pendulum in an intense and absorbing desire to have everything now as +she wanted it. She was tired of thinking of other people; the scene +should be set now for _her_. This desire was a huge mushroom growth, +sprung up in a night; it had no real root in her nature, and would +vanish as suddenly as it had come, but the shadow of it distorted her. + +The house was very much smaller than Dosia had imagined, and her eyes +roved over the little drawing-room in some perplexity, trying to make it +come up to her anticipation. All dwellers in small country places, where +economy is Heavens first law, expect to be dazzled by the grandeur and +elegance of the city. People in Balderville never dreamed of buying +new furniture from towns twenty or thirty miles away; as chair-legs +broke off, or rockers split, or tables came to pieces, all sorts of +domestic devices were resorted to by all but shiftless householders who +tamely submitted to ruin, in coaxing the article into seeming wholeness +and keeping it still in active use. The best families were learned in +all the little ways and capabilities of string and wire, and wooden +cleats and old hinges and tacks, and pieces of tin cut from tomato-cans, +and in the glueing on of piano-keys, black-walnut excrescences, +ornaments, and sofa-arms. + +Mended furniture has, however, a deprecating expression of its own, not +to be concealed by any art. Dosia recognized the absence of it in these +trim chairs that stood nattily on their slender curved legs, in the +little shining tables which did not require to be hidden by a hanging +cloth, and in the china and bric--brac placed boldly where they could +be seen on all sides. She wondered a little at the low wicker arm-chair +in which she was sitting, for they had wicker furnishings in the +Balderville hotel, but the blue-skyed water-color sketches on the walls +caught her fancy, and the vista of a blue-and-white dining-room, seen +through half-closed reddish portires, was charming. For all the shine +and polish and multiplicity of small ornaments in the tiny apartment, it +seemed to lack a kind of comfort to which she was used, and of which she +had caught a glimpse in the sitting-room as she passed it. She gave an +exclamation of delight as her eyes fell on a stand in one corner of the +room on which was a long glass filled with pink roses. + +How beautiful these are! I havent seen any finer ones in Balderville, +and you know we are famed for our roses there. + +Oh, said Lois, to think that you have been in the house for over an +hour and I never told you about them! Justins not coming upset +everything. They were sent to you this afternoon. + +Sent to _me_? + +Yesby Mr. Sutton. Didnt you say you met him with Justin on the +boat?a short, stout man with sandy hair. + +Yes, Justin introduced him, but he hardly spoke to me. + +That doesnt make any difference, he sent them before he saw you at +all. I told him you were coming, and these arrived this afternoon. You +neednt feel particularly flattered; he sends them to everybody. + +Sends them to everybody! Dosia looked amazed. + +Oh, yes; hes rich, and devoted to girls. They laugh at him, but I +notice that they are quite ready to accept his flowers and candy and +tickets for the opera. I believe that he wants to get married; but he +really is sensible and quite nice underneath it all. + +Oh! said Dosia, indefinably revolted. Andand is Mr. Barr like that, +too? + +Who, Lawson? Oh, dear, no; he cant even support himself, let alone +sending presents. + +He said such queer things, ventured Dosia, with a shy desire to talk +about him. I did not know what to make of it at first. + +Oh, nobody pays any attention to what Lawson says, said Lois +indifferently. + +Dosia longed to ask why, with an instant wave of resentment at this way +of speaking; a cloud seemed suddenly to have descended upon the +glittering possibilities of her future. She fixed her eyes on her +cousin, who sat in a high, slender chair, one arm gowned in yellow silk +thrown over the back of it, and her cheek upon her armher rich +coloring, the grace of her attitude, the sweep of her long black skirt, +made a deep impression on the mind of the little country girl, who +seemed slight and meager and insignificant to herself. And this other +woman had been lovedshe had passed through all the experiences to +which Dosia looked forward. Was it that which gave her this charm thrown +over her like a gauzy veil? + +What a beautiful waist you have on! she exclaimed impulsively. Yellow +is such a lovely color. + +Do you think so? said Lois. This is an old thing that I mended to +wear because Justin always likes it. I do wish hed come. She rose and +walked restlessly to the window. Im worried about him. + +Yes, said Dosia, still looking, and pleased that the remark bore out +her fancy. But she wondered; married women in Balderville looked +differentthe hot Southern sun had burned the color out of their +cheeks, and the gowns they mended were of cotton, not of yellow silk; +this fresh youthfulness and self-sufficiency both attracted and +repelled, it seemed so beyond her. Her heart bounded at the thought that +Aunt Theodosia had sent money for her clothes as well as for her music +lessons. + +She did not resist the second attempt to send her to bed, although +Justin was still absent. Lois had brought her all the things she needed +in the absence of her wrecked luggage, and kissed her good night with +tenderness, saying, I hope youll be very happy here, Dosia, and she +answered, Thank you so much for having me. + +In spite of her helpless fatigue, she lay awake for a long time in her +tiny room. The brass bed, the polished floor with the crimson rug on it, +the dainty dressing-table, had all seemed charmingly luxurious and like +a book, but now that she was in darkness, she only saw vividly a pair of +sparkling eyes looking into hers, and caught the sound of a kind, +half-mocking voice. Every word of the conversation repeated itself again +to her excited mind; it was delightful to remember, because she had +acquitted herself so well; if she had replied stupidly she would have +died of vexation now. How clever he had been, and how really +considerate!for she was glad to think that he had said foolish things +to her to keep her from breaking down. + +Do I look like a person of whom you would approve? + +I havent considered the subject. She flashed the answer back again, +and laughed, with her cheek glowing on the pillow. Why had Lois spoken +of him so strangely? She vainly strove to fathom the significance of the +words, which she resented, although they had coincided with an +instinctive feeling she had that he was not at all the kind of man she +would ever want to marry. She had already taken that provisionary leap +into a mythical future which is one of the perfunctory attitudes of +maidenhood. + +But who wanted to think of marrying now, anyway? That was something so +far off that it seemed like the end of all things to Dosia, who at +present only innocently desired plenty of emotions to live +uponcostlier living than she knew, poor child! The very instinct that +warned her against it added a heightened charm to the perilous pleasure. +And the other manMr. Suttonhad already sent her flowers! Oh, this +was life, lifethe life she had read of and longed for, where dark eyes +looked at you and made you feel how interesting you were; where you +could have pretty clothes, and look like other people, and be brilliant +and witty and sought after. She blushed with pleasure and excitement. +Then she said a little prayer, with palm pressed to palm under the +covers, and the glamour faded away as a sweet and pure feeling welled up +from the clear depths of her heart. Her hand was once more held in +safety. In her drowsiness, it was as if she had lifted her soft cheek to +be kissed. + +To the eager inquiries of Lois, Justin answered that he had had his +dinner long before and wanted nothing. + +He asked if she and the children were all right,his usual +question,and she waited until he had dropped down in the arm-chair in +the sitting-room up-stairs, after changing his shoes for slippers, +before questioning him. Then she sat down by him and asked: + +Well, how was it? + +She spoke with eagerness, holding one of his hands in hers tenderly, +although it hung limp after the first strong, responsive clasp. + +The fire was out before I got there. + +Do they know how it started? + +Not yet. + +Was the place burned much? + +No, not much. + +Did it do any damage to the machinery? + +Some. + +Lois looked at him in despair. + +Arent you going to tell me _anything_? + +There really isnt anything to tell, dear. He strove to speak with +attention. You know just about as much of it all as I do. + +Oh, but Im so sorry for you! Will it put you back any? + +I suppose so. + +Oh, _dear_! she moaned helplessly. Isnt it too bad! If only you had +not been obliged to take that journey! Do you suppose it would have +happened if you had stayed at home? + +I really cant tell. The fire might have been discovered earlier; it +started at noon, when most of the clerks were out at lunch. + +I see. But no one can hold you responsible. + +I am responsible for everything. If you do not mind, Lois, Ill go to +bed. Im tired; I didnt get any sleep last night. + +Yes, of course. She smoothed his hair with her fingers in remorseful +tenderness, leaning against him, with her laces touching his cheek. +Such a long, long, tiresome journey! Its such a pity you had to go. + +Oh, well, I had to, and thats the end of it. Dont lets talk about it +any more. I hope that poor girl gets some sleep to-night; she needs it. +She cant hear us, can she? + +No. Didnt you think she was sweet? + +Yes, she seemed nice enough; shes prettya little stupid, perhaps. + +Oh, poor Dosia! said Lois, stupid! I should think she might have +been, after all she had gone through. But then, youre so used to my +cleverness! She looked up at him with provocative eyes, into which he +smiled faintly, in recognition of what was expected of him; then he +said, with a sudden appealing change of tone, Im _very_ tired, Lois. + +She kissed him good night tenderly, with magnanimous concession to his +unresponsiveness; there was no room for her in his thoughts to-night, +and she had been so longing to see him! But she would tell him all about +it to-morrow. + +Justin laid his head upon the pillow, but his eyes burned into the +darkness; there was a proud and bitter disappointment at his heart, even +while reason adjusted his losses to their proper place. Before him in +disagreeable force came the face of Leverich, and it was not the face of +a man to whom one would care to make excuse or from whom one would +challenge reproof; he could see the heavy jowl, the piercing eyes, the +half-pompous, half-shrewd expression of one who respected nothing but +success. This tangle up of the machinery, unusual and costly in its +parts and appointmentsHeaven only knew what far-reaching complications +the delay of its repair might occasion! Justin had seen only too well in +others how a false step at the first may count. + +Whether or not Dosia and the typometer were united in their destinies, +they had at least one thing in commonthey were both embarked upon +perilous ways. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +Joseph Leverich, however, proved unexpectedly kind and sympathetic when +Justin approached him on the latters return from the West. Justin had +written to him, and then had been incidentally renforced by the +assistance of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. Bullen, the foreman, was versed in +practical knowledge of the machinery, and how to go to work about +repairs; different portions had to be sent for to all parts of the +country. Justin pored over catalogues, and checked off and figured, and +tried to find ready-made substitutes wherever he could for those they +ordinarily manufactured for the typometer. Here Cater, who had worked up +gradually into the manufacturing of his own machine, was of great use. + +You never can find anything just as you want it, he conceded, +encouragingly, to Justin, but you can whittle off here and there, and +make it do. I had to get along that way at first. You can manage pretty +well, only there isnt any real certainty to it. I got sort of +wearyhe pronounced it weeryof sending for steel bars to fit, and +then getting a consignment of em just two sizes too large, with a +polite note saying that they were out of what I wanted, but thought it +was best, at any rate, to send me what they had. You dont want to buck +up against that kind of thing too oftennot for your own good. So I +started up the machinery, and even that goes back on you sometimes. + +Mine has, said Justin grimly. + +Oh, I dont mean that wayits in the way it turns out the stuff. You +get so cussed mi-nute nothing seems quite right to you. You get kinder +soured even on the material in the rough; the grain is wrong in this, +and that hasnt been worked sufficient, and that tother weighs too +light. + +How long do you guarantee the typometer for? + +For a year. + +We stake out ours for two,go you one better,but its all rot. You +cant guarantee nothin in this world; I know that isnt grammar, but it +kinder seems to mean moren if twas. You cant guarantee nothin, not +unless you could have the making of the raw material, and then you +couldnt. And you cant guarantee your workmen, especially when you have +to keep changing; I reckon human imperfections got to step in +somewhere. Talk of skilled labor! Thats what takes the blood out of a +man, the everlasting wrench of trying to get skilled labor that is +skilled. Some of it is so loose-jawed it cant even chew straight. + +Youre a pessimist, said Justin, smiling. + +The other broke into a responsive grin. + +Yes, I reckon thats so; but I dont even guarantee to be that, steady. +Sometimes I get kinder mushy and pleasant, and think the world aint a +closed-up oyster,Shakespeare,but just nice soft cream-cheese thats +ready to be spooned up when you want it. Those are the sort of spells a +mans got to look out for, or hes likely to find himself up against the +rocks, without even an oyster-shell in sight. + +Thats a bad position, said Justin, and Cater nodded confirmatively. +After a moment he said: + +Well, Ill guarantee _that_; Ive been there. As he was going, he +asked: Hows Miss Dosia? Pretty well shook up, I suppose. + +Oh, shes all right now, said Justin. Shes been resting for a couple +of days. You must come and see her; she will be glad to see a face from +home. + +I reckon Ill wait awhile, said Cater, till a face from homes more +of a novelty. She aint hankering for a sight of mine now. And, indeed, +Dosia, on being informed of the prospect, showed no great enthusiasm. +Balderville and the people there were so far away in the past that she +had lost connection with them. + +And, after all, Leverich met Justins explanation cordially. + +Oh, you couldnt help a thing like that, he said. Dont know yet how +the fire started, do they? Accidents are bound to occur when you least +look for them. The loss was fully covered, wasnt it? + +Oh, yes. + +Im glad the orders came in, anyway. Just bluff those fellows off a +bittell em youve got a lot more orders on and _theyve_ got to wait; +thats the way to do it. + +Oh, yes, I know that; the only thing I want is to be sure, myself, when +the orders can be filled. Im trying to get the machinery at work as +soon as possible, and were sending all over the country for what we +need. Caterhes the manufacturer of the timoscript, across the street, +has told me of a place where they make small steel bars such as we use. +Ive brought the catalogue with me. I sent for a consignment of them +yesterday; Bullen says theyll do. + +Yes, thats all right, said Leverich. Oh, youll get along, youll +get along! I knew you wouldnt sit down and wait until I came home to +get on your feet. Dont mind drawing on us for extra money if you need +itand we want to get in for the export trade. What do you think of +this? He took some papers out of his desk and began explaining them to +Justin, who listened attentively before making suggestions. His mind, +although not unusually quick, was singularly clear and comprehensive; he +brought to Leverichs aid, if not the intelligence of the expert, +something which is often harder to get, and which Leverich was +experienced enough to appreciate at its full valuethe intelligence +which sees the matter from the standpoint of the big outer world, and +not only from the inner radius of a little circle. Justins vision was +not, as yet, impeded by the technicalities and preconceived opinions +which often obstruct the fresh point of view even in very clever men +whose talent it is to see clearly. + +We havent made any mistake in getting you, he said to Justin, as they +parted. + +The belated fifty dollars were carried to Lois that night, with a +subdued joy in the glad provision of more to come. They were still to +live on as little as they could, but the idea of the limit stretched to +include those extra fives and tens whose expenditure was in the interest +of true economy. + +For a few days after her arrival Theodosia had kept her bed, in a +reaction from the strain of the journey that made her too weak to care +to do anything but lie in a half-drowsing and peaceful condition, +hearing the sound of the childrens voices as if they were very far off. +Lois brought up the dainty meals herself, and talked the little talk +women use on such occasions, and at four oclock each afternoon Zaidee +appeared with a tiny lacquered tray on which stood an egg-shell cup +filled with fragrant tea, and a biscuit, and watched Dosia, as she ate +and drank, with benignant satisfaction. The younger Reginald was still +afraid and was lured near her bedside only to rush off again; but with +Zaidee there was a loving comradeship. + +It was well that Dosia had even lost interest in Mr. Barrs call the +next afternoon, for he did not come, and afterwards she grew ashamed +that she had harbored the interest at all. Mr. Sutton, after sending +more flowers, had departed for Boston. + +But, after this convalescence, by the end of the week Dosia emerged, +eager, alert, with pink cheeks and gleaming eyes, having passed through +some subtle transformation, and bent on pleasure. She was rather silent, +indeed, except when carried away by sudden excitement, but she was +rapturously happy at the prospect of a concert and a card-party and a +large bazaar to be given soon; the concert and the bazaar were both for +charity, and she was already engaged to serve at the flower-booth in the +latter; there was to be dancing after the closing of both +entertainments. + +Clothes were the first requisite, after a definite arrangement had been +made to begin the music lessons in two weeks time. Every little +preparation was a source of delight to Dosia, who thought Lois wonderful +as a designer and adapter of fashions suitable to her purse, and the +older woman threw herself into this work with a sort of fierce ardor. + +[Illustration: _Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction_] + +Dosia had never seen so much ready money spent in her life, and had +never heard so much talk about itwhy should she, in a place where no +one bought anything, where long-outstanding bills for tiny sums were +paid for mostly in lumber, or chickens, or cotton? Here the price of +daily living and clothing and amusements was one of the stock topics in +the intimate round of suburban dwellers. Women came to visit her cousin +Lois who at times made it their sole subject of conversation, +incidentally submitting the very garments they wore to appraisal, for +the pleasure of springing an unexpected price in her face like a +jack-in-the-box, at which she was to jump admiringly. Lois declaimed +against the habit, even while she sometimes fell a victim to it, and +Dosia found herself drawn into the same ways, after a delightful revel +in shopping for new clothes with Aunt Theodosias money. The chief +requisite in any article bought was that it should look to be worth more +than was paid for it. + +What most impressed Dosia in the big city was, not the size of it, nor +the height of the buildings, nor the magnificence of the shopsshe +accepted these wonders, indeed, with the provoking acquiescence which +dwellers in outlying sections of the country display when confronted +with the reality they have seen so often depicted. It was the crowd, the +rush of the people, the tense expression on the faces, that struck her +with amazement; everyone looked in grim haste to get somewhere, and +forged ahead untiringly with set and definite purpose, as if there were +not a minute to lose. Dosia had been used to sauntering aimlessly, and +to seeing everyone else saunter. There was no hurry at Balderville, +except in Northern people on their first arrival, and they soon lost it. +Dosia clung to Lois arm on their first excursion, but the next time she +suddenly dropped the arm and forged ahead breathlessly, being caught, as +she was crossing a street, by a policeman just in time to escape being +run over by an electric car. When Lois came up to her, horrified and +indignant, the girl was laughing in wild exhilaration. + +Oh, its such fun! she said. Im going to walk like the other people +after this; but Ill stop when I get to the crossings, so you neednt +mind. People turned around to look at the pretty girl with the hair +blown back from her face, standing still in the street and laughing. The +excitement was all part of the first intoxication of the new life. + +In the intervals of going to town, there were calls to be received, some +from married women, and some from young girls who were asked especially +to meet Dosia, and who expressed pleasure that she was to spend the +winter with them. She was asked to join a book club and a card club, and +to pour tea at the next meeting of the Junior Guildproceedings that at +the first blush appeared radiantly festive. It was understood that she +was to be of the inner circle. + +When the other functions took place, Dosia was a success both at the +concert and the bazaar; a score of youths were introduced to her, with +whom she laughed and chatted and promenaded and danced; she danced every +time. The society of a new place is apt to appear extraordinarily +attractive until one begins to resolve it into its component parts, when +it is seen to differ but little from that one has hitherto known. Of +these dancing youths, Dosia was yet to realize that half of them were +younger even than she; some who seemed to take a great fancy for her +were the bores whom all the other girls got rid of, if possible; others +were just a little below the grade of real refinement; the really nice +fellows were not there at all, with the exception of a stray few, and +those who were attendant on their fiances. Just at present the rhythm +of the music and the joy of motion were all in all to Dosia. Her honest +and artless pleasure shone so plainly from her face that for the moment +it was a compelling attraction in itselffor the moment, as neither +good looks, nor honesty, nor the artlessness of joy in ones own +pleasure, serve as a power of fascination: it takes a subtler quality, +combined of both sympathy and reservesomething always given, something +always withheld. + +This happiness of healthy youth, which as yet depended on no individual +note, could last but such a brief time! When she looked back upon it, it +seemed like a little sunny, transfigured place that somebody else had +lived inthe Dosia who was just glad. + +Lois watched her enjoyment, half preoccupied, yet smilingly, pleased +with the girls prettiness and success. Dosia thought, How kind she +is! and yet, when another woman came to her and said, with warm +impulsiveness, My dear child, its a pleasure to look at you! she felt +that she had now the one thing she had missed. + +She went to the last evening of the bazaar clad in a floating blue gown +that matched her eyes. The curve of her arms, bare to the elbow, the way +the tendrils of her hair fell across her forehead, her sudden dimpling +smile, the glad, unconscious motions of her beautiful youth, would have +made her, to those who loved, the personification of darling maidenhood, +with that haunting tinge of pathos which is the inheritance of the +woman-child. + +She sold more flowers than any other girl at the bazaar that night, and +there she met Mr. Sutton, who had, indeed, called upon her, but at a +time when she was out. This guaranteed man was rather short, stocky, and +common-place-looking, with a large, round, beardless face, and a long, +newly shaven upper lip. But his appearance made no difference; Dosias +radiant happiness flowed over on him with impartial delight, and if she +sold many flowers, it was he who bought most of them, presenting them to +her again afterwards, so that one corner of the room was heaped up with +her spoils, and her arms were full of roses. She trailed around the +crowded room with him in her blue gown, as he had insisted on her advice +in buying, and received gifts of books and candy in the interests of +organized charity. It was like being in the Arabian Nights to have +inconsequent gifts showered upon one in this way, but she succeeded in +dissuading him from offering her a large green and pink flowered plaque +of local art, and was relieved when he gave it to the lady who had it +for sale. + +A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden, he said +apologetically. Each lady makes me promiseweeks beforehandto come +and buy from her especial table. If they would only have something I +_could_ want,he looked at her humorously,it would be easy enough +to keep my word. Why dont they ever sell things a man can use? But look +for yourself, Miss Lindenits charity to help me out. He paused +irresolutely by a yellow-draped table. Might you like some sewing-bags, +now, or this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of +theseplush arrangements? + +No! said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, I mightnt. + +Or a doll, now? He had strayed a step farther on. Would you like a +doll for Mrs. Alexanders little girl, and some of these charming toys? + +Oh, how _lovely_ of you! said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of +her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent +gratitude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon +the scene. George Suttons seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He +was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had +been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had +been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and +living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied +Spanish in a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his life +to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to +give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea +that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before +asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret +that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young +woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his +glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his +sentimental remarks had been confided by one girl to another. But +further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. +Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it +permanently on one person. George Suttons heart performed the pleasing +miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his +amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so +strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself +to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to +have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had +never made a bad bargain. + +Dosias grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet +vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she +gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for +the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be +deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be +fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not +notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although +everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time +until the dancing began. + +Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not +learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had +been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished +perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements +of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn, +without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could +not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons +or of lambs could have propitiated the gods who presided over the +Terpsichorean art, Mr. Suttons domestic altars would have been reeking +with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart +as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It +seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked +in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized +his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up +and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little +boy. + +It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in +the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held +in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She +watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather +wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and +darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever +the peculiar effect of being unlike other peoplehis overcoat hung +carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the +other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression +of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact +that he had lingered in her thought at all. + +He had been the subject of Lois conversation on one of the afternoons +of Dosias convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by +others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about +him, she was met by the casual answer, Oh, everybody knows what Lawson +is. He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he +carried no weight, and there seemed to be social limitations which it +was an understood thing that he was not to pass. + +Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little country town of +his birth with a past such as places of the kind are too fatally apt to +fasten upon the boys who grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, +Heaven only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barrs idle youth +had been subject; and nobody in his new home had cared to hear. Scandal +may be interesting, but one instinctively avoids filth. It was an +understood thing, when he first came to Woodside, that his +brother-in-law, Joseph Leverich, had lifted him out of a scrape in +response to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy back +with him to get him away from village temptations and substitute the +more bracing conditions of city life, where entertainment that was not +vicious could be had. + +The experiment had apparently worked well; in the eight years which +Lawson Barr had passed in Woodside, no one had anything bad to tell of +him. He was more inclined to the society of men than of women, and +shared the imputation of being fond of what is called a good time; but +he was never seen really under the influence of liquor. Shy in general +company at first, he became rather a favorite afterwards in a certain +way; he was fond of sports, and was very kind to women and children; he +was also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the piano when he +was in the mood; he was one of those gifted people who can play, after +their own fashion, on any instrument. When he felt pleasantly inclined, +no one was more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He had +become engaged to a girl in good standing, after a summer flirtation. +The girl had come there on a visit, and the engagement lasted only until +her return and the revelation of his prospects to parental inspection. + +For Lawson never had any prospectsor, at least, they never solidly +materialized. He never kept his positions for more than a few months at +a time. There was always a different reason for this, more or less +unimportant on each occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers +whom he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated by +his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic in finding new +openings for him, ready to champion hotly his merits against that most +galling of all criticism, which consists in the simple statement of +adverse facts. + +You will never be able to make anything out of him, was a sentence +which his relays of friends were sure to hand on to one another. + +One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep the golf-grounds in +ordera position, however, which he filled in such a well-bred manner, +and with so many niceties of consideration for everyones comfort, that +to have him around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, and +the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket once more and +started going in to town mornings as one of them. + +Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the village, and part of +the time he stayed with the Leverichs; rumor said that Leverich +alternately turned him out or welcomed him, as he lost or renewed +patience, but the relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always +appeared to be friendly. + +Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing to forget the +youthful faults of the handsome, clever boy, and let him in on probation +to the outer edges of it, it was a singular fact that after all these +years of apparent respectability he had made no further progress. + +There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences with a +certain inner purity untouched; with an added reverence for goodness, +and a strength of character all the greater for the sheer effort of +retrieval; whose eyes are forever ashamed when they look back on the +sins that were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the +painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there had been, +perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison lodged, to a +deterioration, however delicate, of the whole tissue. It is strangeor, +rather, it is not strangethat, in spite of respectability of life, +with nothing whatever that was tangible to contravene it, this should +have been thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what felt +of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one he does, and the +combined judgment of the members of an intelligent suburban community is +very keen as to character, no matter how it differs in regard to +actions. The standard of morality in such a section is highit may +indulge occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a lower scale, +but in social relations the lesser order must go. Shadiness is +damning. Lawson was not exactly shady, but he might be. No girl was +ever supposed to fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too +intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. Strangers whom +he impressed favorably always asked, as Dosia did, Why, what has he +_done_? And received the same reply Lois gave her: Oh, nothing. + +Isnt henice? + +Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He cant seem to make a living; +I dont know whyhes clever enough. Theres really nothing against him +though, except that he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that +when he goes away on trips hedrinks. But Justin wouldnt like me to +say it; he hates to have people talked about in this way. Stillits +just as well that you should know all about him. + +Oh, yes, said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, yet in +reality mystified. She felt at once indignant at the imputations thrown +on Mr. Barr, and yet a little ashamed of having liked him, as something +in bad taste. + +As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped that he wouldnt +come and speak to her at all; but the hope was vain, for, without +apparently seeing her, he made his way through the room, at the +cessation of the dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers. + +It is in one of George MacDonalds stories that Curdie, the hero, tests +everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which unconsciously reveals the true +nature to his magic sense; claws and paws and hoofs and the serpents +writhe are plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia +involuntarily tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand that had +held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction was strong within her +that some day she would meet and recognize her helper by that remembered +touch, if in no other way. Mr. Barrs hand was smooth, with long +fingers, and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away quickly, +with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met his coolly +appraising eyes, that she had done something school-girlish and +ill-bred. + +You did not come to see me, after all, she said, when the first +greeting was over, and could have bitten out her tongue for saying it. + +I regretted very much not being able to, he replied, in a tone of +conventional politeness. I went West the next day, and have only just +returned. You have been enjoying yourself, I hope? + +Oh, immensely, said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; I couldnt have +had a better time, possibly. Her eyes roved toward the people in front +of them with studied inattention, although she was strangely conscious +in every tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side. + +You have been to town, I suppose? he pursued. + +Yes, indeed, several times. + +Would you care to come out in the corridor and walk? he asked +abruptly, as the music struck up again. Im not in evening dress, you +see; I only returned from my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer +to dance? he added. + +Oh, I prefer to dance! said Dosia, with the first natural inflection +her voice had possessed in speaking to him. + +Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow coming over for you. +Good night. + +You are not going to leave _now_? exclaimed Dosia, with disappointment +too quick to be concealed. + +In a few moments; I may not see you again. He did not offer his hand +this time, but bowed and was gone. + +It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, +and Dosias feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she +did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they +circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled +of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were +being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under +the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of +silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the +smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while +his mother lamented her husbands prolonged absence to everyone who +passed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, +going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the +floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the +dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck +twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose: + +One more waltzjust one more! This is the best part of the evening. +LawsonLawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, dont say youre too +tiredplay! + +Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosias waist, +looking questioningly down at her. + +I think Id better go, she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet +with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was +plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancingyet she was +young, too. But at that moment the music struck up againthere was a +crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found +herself gliding into motion ere she was aware. She knew before she +looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the +keys, seemed remote and sad. + +The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened +for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the +bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood +massed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the +polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as +Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it +that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers +flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. +Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which +she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that +she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept +them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden +of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the +stars she swung in that long, entrancing strainfrom the flowers to the +stars! From the starsah, whither went that flight of ecstasythis +endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again nowback +to the stars; beyond, beyondoh, whither? + +A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. It brought Dosia +to the earth, awake and trembling, with parted lips and panting breath. +But her eyes had the wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the +flowers, as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching +the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had slipped unnoticed +from her hand, she walked across the floor with Billy. Her loveliness, +as she smiled, brought a pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so +plainly of the evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the +future possession of some dearest lover, who could never know his loss. + +I hope I havent let you stay too long, Dosia, she said practically, +and Justin hurried her into her wraps, after she had given Billy the +rose he asked for. Everybody was leaving at once in couples, laughing +and chattering, with the lights turned out behind them as they went. + +The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with Justin and Lois +was a side view of Lawson Barr going down the stone steps, carrying in +his arms the child who had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The +light head rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs +hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, voluble in thanks, +with the childs cap in her hand. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence +known locally as going to Stevens; in other words, he was a daily +attendant at the institute of that name, situate on the heights of +Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of +that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to +over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each +morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient +trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied +fitfully as he journeyed. + +Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters +admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a +small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother +often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and +that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same +effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of +his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so +blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his +round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her Williams +ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way +that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, +Billy was a young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short +clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of +circumstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his +mothers exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with +naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had +accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the +injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had +had the first convincing shy; she had complained untiringly to parents +by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to +the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadnt been +the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an +outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an +understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mothers +attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain +loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward +authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far +below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the +meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow. + +The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently +experiencing the tender passion since the age of seven, she regarded +only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have +liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude +boys. + +With added years Billys outward demeanor had changed in his daily +journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with +school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare; +he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat, +or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But +the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that +its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers one +day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he +would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him, +or whether he was up against it again at Stevens, his replies were +unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The +change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was +caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him. + +The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a +peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in +the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one +turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek +and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose +and a dark mustachethe nose and the mustache turned sideways much +oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a +pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and +fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and +Billy swore under his breath. + +When the train had rolled into the station, he went with the other +passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house to seeyes, they were +going over the same ferry together, he still bending toward her as they +walked, she with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one +unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, The gall of him! and +walked away to the humiliating trolley which showed that he was still +going to Stevens. If he had been out of bondage, he would have been +quick to follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and +show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate duet. + +It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain days his +accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected that he no longer +whistled cheerily all the time he was dressing, but only when he heard +her foot upon the stairs; and although he still chaffed his admiring +sisters at dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the +jesting that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. He +found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. His mother +brought him pills which he refused to take, towering above hershe was +a little womantense and aloof. When she taxed him with having +something on his mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her +go no further. + +It is nothing to do with myself, he conceded, with the spirit of a man +looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The woman in her bowed to it as +she went down-stairs, with pride in him rampant in her heart, to deliver +her report to the two sisters waiting below. + +The Snow family had been settled in the town from its beginning as a +suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow having diedafter losing money +largely on his real-estate investments theretwelve years later, when +Billy was an infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large +taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in the place, rich +and poor, and were consequently regarded somewhat in the light of a +directory; the woman by the day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man +or boy could always be achieved by applying to them, for they had an +invariable acquaintance with respectable persons temporarily forced into +filling these positions. They themselves, while adding to their own +finances in various ways, neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their +affairs could interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small +old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall nearly level +with the street; and the little low-ceiled parlor and sitting-room, with +their narrow doorways and slightly uneven floors, were crowded with +large mahogany and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and +Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, from the +cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the ornamental hanging +calendar of the past season. In the autumn the ladies potted plants with +such accumulative energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of +damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and spikes and flat +blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly where to sit without +encroaching perilously on these; Billys friends always dropped first +into a certain chair and rocked into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on +the marble-topped table behind. + +The Snows had the recognized position in society of being Asked to +Everything. When they went to entertainments, it was in the dark, quiet +garments of every-day life, or the one often remodeled state robe +belonging to each, irrespective of what other people wore. Their +circumstances and their birth were too well known to need pretense. + +Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was twenty-seven, tall +like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be +the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict +unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer +youngas a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely +distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. +Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow +up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long +custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for +sixteen. She was her brothers favorite, secretly aiding and abetting +him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him +now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in +view of his height and large experience. + +The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman, +dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations +and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden +beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat +by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming +plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went +up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and +the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary +fenceincidents of note in themselves without further connection. She +seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one +were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could +answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had +worked hard for her mother in her early youththat little mother who +now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room from her +interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone +of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: William wont +tell me whats the matter, but I know its something to do with that +girl at the Alexanders. Willie is growing up so fast! + +Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden, said Miss Bertha, in comfortable +corroboration. Thats been going on for some weeks. + +Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps shes snubbed +him in some way. + +No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating +Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, its just +being in love that upsets him. + +Yes, I really think thats all. + +Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with +slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth. +The daylight was beginning to go. + +Hes got a rose she gave him,never mind how I know,and he keeps it +wrapped up in tissueshe pronounced it tisherpaper in his +waistcoat pocket. He leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his +clothes. And Ada saysyou know that picture in the magazine that we all +said looked so like Miss Linden? Hes got it in a little frame. Ada says +that it tumbles out from underneath his pillow once in a while when +shes taking the covers off; I suppose the child puts it there at night +and forgets it in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again +when she makes up the bed, as if shed overlooked it. He never says +anything, and of course she doesnt, either. + +I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously, said the +mother, alarmed. She had known all this before, but it was a fashion of +the family to talk over and over what they already knew. I _hope_ she +will not take him seriously. + +Mother! Theyre both so young. Ada, who had been leaning forward with +her face in her hands and her chin upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke +for the first time. + +Oh, thats very well! Mrs. Snow tossed her head as one with +experience. He is, of course, nothing but a mere boy at nineteen, but a +girl of twenty is years older. When a girl is twenty, she goes in +society with women of _any_ age. I was married myself at eighteennot +that I should wish either of my daughters to do so. + +Well, you can feel safe about that, mother, interpolated Ada. + +William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not blame any girl +for being somewhat captivated by him; I should be sorry if Miss Linden +allowed her affections to be engaged. She may not know that his career +is mapped out before him. William will not be in a position to marry +before he is thirty-six. William is + +The people are coming from the train, interposed Miss Bertha, waving +back one thin hand to stop her mothers discoursewhich she could have +repeated backwardand scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across the +street. + +Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, come here. Mrs. +Leverich has on her new fursthe ones her husband gave her. Dont they +make her look stout? There are the Brentons, I think thats a bag of +coffee hes carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square +endsperhaps _shes_ been buying corsets; if not, it must be a bottle +of whisky. And therewho is that? Oh, I thought it was Mr. Alexander in +a new coat; of course its too early for himthey say hes been making +money hand over hand lately. And here comeswhy its George Sutton! +Ada, Ada, bow! hes looking. He sees us wavingah! + +There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared on the cheeks +of both sisters. + +The mother murmured apprehensively, They say _he_ is devoted to Miss +Linden, but neither answered. Ada had benefited, like the other girls, +by his attentions, she had been given candy and flowers and made one in +his theater-parties, but it was the secret conviction of all three women +that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his real +devotion to Ada. The others were just a circleshe was the particular +one; and Heaven only knows how many girls in this circle shared the same +conviction. His smile and nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that +blotted out all his preference for Miss Linden. + +You had better pull down the shade now, said Mrs. Snow, after a few +minutes. Its time to light the lamp. + +No, wait a momenttheres another train in. Miss Berthas eyes +pierced the gloom. The Carpenter boys, those new people in the Farley +house, and thats all. No, theres somebody way behindI declare, its +Miss Linden! Shes ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at +first. I wonder she didnt come on the train ahead. Who can that be with +her? Why there was a pause. I suppose he must have just happened to +get off with her at the station, said Miss Bertha in an altered voice. + +Oh, yes; Im sure thats it, said Ada. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +What is all this that I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? asked Justin +abruptly, one evening when he and his wife were at home alone together, +a rather unusual occurrence now. Either he was out, or there was +company, or Dosia was sitting with them by the table on which stood the +reading-lamp. Just now she was staying overnight with Miss Torrington, +at the other end of the town, across the track, practicing for a +concert. + +Justin had dropped his collar-button that morning in the process of +dressing, and the small incident was productive of unforeseen results. +The hunt for it had delayed him to a later train and a seat by Billy +Snow. + +What is this I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? They say she has been +going in with him on the express nearly every morning this month. She +may have been coming out with him, too, for all I know. + +Who says so? asked Lois, startled, but contemptuous. + +Billy, for one. + +I do not see what business it is of his. + +That hasnt anything to do with it, Lois. As a matter of fact, the boy +wouldnt have told me at all if I hadnt happened to sit with him +to-day; hes heard plenty of remarks on it, though, and hes cut up +about it. They sat in front of us, some seats down, entirely oblivious +of everybody; it might have been their private car. It gave me a start, +I can tell you, when Billy said it was not the first time. Has she said +anything to you about it? + +Yes, I think she has mentioned once or twice that she had seen him on +the train; I know he brought her home one afternoon when she was late. +But I havent paid any particular attention; and, after all, theres no +harm in it. + +Oh, no; theres no _harm_, if you put it that wayonly she mustnt do +it. You know what I mean, Lois. Dosia ought not to want to be with him. + +I suppose he comes and talks to her, and she doesnt know how to stop +him. + +Perhaps. + +And you sent her out in his care that first night, said Lois. She felt +unbelieving and combative; Lawson was so unattractive to her that she +could not conceive of his being otherwise to any girl. + +Of course; and I would do so again under the same circumstancesthat +was an emergency. But thats very different from making a practice of +it. You must tell Dosia, as long as she cant see it herself. Let her +get her lesson changed to another hour and that will settle the thing. +Does she see much of Barr at other places? + +No more than anybody else does; of course, he is more or less around. +But she knows _just_ what he is like, Justin; I told her all about him +the first thing, and she hears it from everybody. I am sure you are +mistaken about her liking his society, she told me once that it always +made her uncomfortable when he was near her. I really dont think you +need be afraid of anything serious. + +All right, then. Probably a hint will be sufficient; but dont forget +to give it, Lois. She is very much of a child in some things. + +Yes, she is, said Lois, resignedly. + +This having Dosia with them had turned into one of those burdens which +people sometimes ignorantly assume under a rose-colored impulse. It had +seemed that it must be necessarily a charming thing to have a young girl +in the house. But to have a young girl who was always practicing on the +piano, to the derangement of Reginalds sleep or to the inconvenience of +visitors in the little drawing-room, one who had to be specially +considered in every plan, and whose presence took away all privacy from +Lois daily companionship with Justin, was a doubtful pleasure. Even +this rainy evening with Justin and herself cozily placed together was, +after all, not hers, but invaded, if not with the presence, at least +with the disturbing thought of Dosia. + +There were all the little grievances which sound so infinitesimal, and +yet count up to so much when sympathy is lacking. Dosia had lived in a +Southern atmosphere and in a home which had no regular rule. She +invariably wanted to play with the children at the wrong time, and yet +perhaps did not always offer to take care of them when it would have +been a help. If Lois was busy when Justin came home at night, she would +invariably find afterwards that Dosia had swiftly poured into his +earsin nervous loquacity at being alone with himall the domestic +happenings of the day, so that every remark that Lois made was answered +by a Yes; Dosia has already told me. These slight threads, which Lois +had treasured up from which to spin a little web of interest for her +beloved, would thus be broken off short. Dosia also had a fashion of +ensconcing herself unthinkingly in Justins particular seat by the lamp, +in which case he sat patiently and uncomfortably in an attitude out of +the radius, or else went up-stairs to the untidy sitting-room to read by +himself, leaving Lois, with her teeth on edge, to keep company perforce +with Dosia, to whom he would not allow Lois to make protest, avowing +that he was not inconvenienced at all. He had an unvarying kindness and +sense of justice regarding the girl. But the family was like the bicycle +of concert-hall fame, built for two, and this third person jarred its +running qualities out of gear. + +It was the night after Justins charge to her that Lois nerved herself +to broach the subject of Lawson to Dosia, who was copying some music by +the table. Both her hair and her dress were arranged with a little new +touch of elegance, but there was a droop to the corners of her mouth +that had not been there beforea suggestion of hardness or melancholy +or defiance, it would have been difficult to say which. + +Justin was getting ready to go out, and Lois could hear his footsteps as +he walked up and down above. She hated to begin, and her very reluctance +gave a chill tone to her voice as she said temporizingly, Dosia, please +dont keep Reginald out so late again as you did this afternoon. It is +too cold. + +We only went to the post-office; he said he was warm. + +Dosia, who had generously curtailed her practicing to take the mothers +place, felt ill-used. + +I know; but it was too late for him. His feet were as cold as ice. I am +_so_ afraid of croup. + +Im sorry, said Dosia, in a low voice. I wont do it again. + +Well, never mind that now. Lois hesitated, and then took the plunge: +I want to speak to you about Lawson Barr, Dosia. + +Dosias color, which came and went so prettily when she spoke, always +left her when she was really moved, or at the times when girls +ordinarily blush. She turned pale now and her eyes became defiant, but +she did not answer. + +The other stumbled along, sorry and ashamed, as if she were the culprit: + +People have been commentingI hear that he has been with you a great +deal lately. + +Where? The girls voice was hard. + +On the train. + +He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice the week +beforeyes, and yesterday. And he came out with me once. She counted +out the times as if they were a contravention. I dont see how I am +going to help it if people speak to me, I cant _tell_ them to go away. +_I_ dont want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one day; +was that commented on, too? + +There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth by outraged +modestyand there is no modesty that feels itself more outraged than +that of the girl who knows she has given some slight cause for reproof. + +Dosia, be reasonable, said Lois, annoyed that her talk was being made +so hard for her. I know its horrid to be spoken to, but Justin is +very particular, and he feels that we are responsible for you. And, +besides, you wouldnt want it thought that you liked Lawsons society. I +am to go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the hour for +your lesson changed. She paused for some answer, but none came, and she +went on: I told Justin that he need not worry, there was no danger of +your caring too much for _Lawson_! Thats nonsense. Why, you know all +_about_ him, and just what he amounts to. But, of course, if you are +seen with him + +You need not say any more. I never want to speak to him again! said +Dosia, strangling. She swept her things from the table and rushed up to +her own room in a whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the +imputation in Lois tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was +pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what another +despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate of him as she +had hitherto been to the public one. + +She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something that she had +been unconsciously dreading had come upon herthe notice of her little +world. Before it had been voiced to her by Lois she had persistently +considered herself unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion +for her being spoken to, yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment that +she had not been quite true to her highest instincts. + +The exquisitely sensitive perception which is an inherent part of +innocence was hers. The Dosia who at twelve could not be induced to +enter a room when a certain man was in it, because she did not like the +way he _looked_ at her, had as unerring an instinct now as then; it was +an instinct so deep, so interwoven with every pulse of her nature, that +to deny it ever so little was a spiritual hurt. She could not have told +why certain subjects, certain joking expressions even, revolted her so +that she shrank from them involuntarily. She could not have told why she +knew there was something about Lawson different from the other men she +had been accustomed to. Dosia not only knew nothing of the practice of +evil, she knew nothing of life nor the laws of it; but it could never be +said of her that she did not know when right bordered on wrong. She +knewand it would have been impossible for her not to have knownher +slightest deviation from that shining road which can only be followed by +white feet. Her first quick idea of Lawson as not the kind of man that +she would ever want to marry still held good. Back of all this was the +image of the true prince. + +There are people whose natures we always feel electrically, a sensation +which depends neither on liking nor on disliking, and which often +partakes of both. When we meet them there is always a slight shock, a +psychic tingling, a displacement of values, that makes us uncertain of +our pathway; the colors seen in this artificial light are different from +those seen by day. Barr affected Dosia thus. If he came into a room, she +knew it at once; dancing or walking or talking with others, she felt his +eyes upon her, disquieting her and making her conscious of his presence, +so that she could not get up or sit down naturally. When he was not +there, everything was flat and uninteresting in the withdrawal of this +exciting disquietude. If she met his remarks cleverly, it gave her a +delighted occupation for hours in recalling them; if she failed in +repartee, and was thick and school-girlish, her cheeks would burn and +the taste for life would leave her; she could hardly wait to see him +again to retrieve herself. She was not in love with Barr, she was not +even in love with love,a fairly healthful process,but she was in +love with the excitement of his presence. + +She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to seek her. After the +night of the bazaar and that wondrous waltz, she had felt that he must +fly to speak to her at the nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had +played for her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure +him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She invented many +excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp disappointment of which he was +necessarily unconscious. As she met him casually at different +places,with the old quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar +manner,his lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over which +she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she lived in was +entirely of her own creation. In these last two months she had always an +undercurrent of thought for him, whether she was practicing or sewing, +or chaffing with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy +attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawsons avoidance of her had come a +childish, uncalculating impulse to attract. Dosia had not told the +truth when she said that she could not help his speaking to her; she +knew very well the morning he would have passed her by in the train, as +usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,he knew the +place allotted to him,but he accepted permission. When he sat down by +her, she swiftly wished him away again; yet her heart beat under his +cool glancea glance which seemed to read her every thought. These +interviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, yet in +which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious and stinging +pleasure, like eating ice. + +There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about Christmas-time +and aftera delightful flare that burned up red and glowing, only to +sink back gradually into the darkness of monotony. There was that fall +into a hum-drum condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which +shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept later down-town, +and the women had the usual influx of winter colds and minor maladies +which interfere with planned festivities. The younger sort had +engagements, individually and collectively, for things in town, either +coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight with +friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove Tuesday had fallen +through. + +The fairy glamour was already gone for Dosia. The personal note which +she had missed at first was everything, and she found it nowhere but in +Lawson. If she could have poured out her thoughts and feelings to +Lois,talked things over, girl-fashion,if Lois had been her friend +and loverBut Lois had no room for her; Dosia had learned to feel all +the bitterness of the alien. And she was shy with the pleasant but +self-sufficient women whom she met socially, and who were so intimate +with one another; Dosia merely sat on the edge of conversations, so to +speak, and smiled. She could not learn this assured fluency. The very +children were hedged in from her by restrictions. To give up those +little incidental meetings with Lawson was to give up the one silver +string on which hung happiness, and yetand yetDosia felt the sting +of Lois matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him indescribably. +All women look down upon a man who will allow himself to be despised. +She had cherished an ideal of him as a man lonely, misunderstood, +terribly handicapped by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable +of good and noble things. She had thought + +Dosia? + +Well? + +Will you shut your door? The light streams down here and keeps Reginald +from going to sleep. He waked when you went up-stairs. + +Dosia rose and closed the door noiselessly; she would have liked to shut +it with a bang. It was a climax. There seemed to be nothing that she +could do in this house that was right! Her attitude had ceased to be +only that of an alien, it was that of an antagonist; but it was also +that of a lonely and unguarded child. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. Dosia could hear +Justins voice upraised toward his only son, and Lois pleading +_Please_, Justin! + +Be quiet, Lois; Ill settle this. Go down-stairs. + +I want dinky orter. The childs voice was high. + +You have just had a drink of water; lie still. + +Redge ants noder dinky orter. + +Do you hear me? Lie still. + +Let me take him, Justin; Im sure he isnt well. I + +Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, and could +imagine the look from Justin that had commanded her obedience. There was +a definite masculine authority about him before which, on those rare +occasions when he chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed +down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric ages. Only the +son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness caught from the same +blood. + +It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother down-stairs, +vibrating with sympathy for her child, could not understand Justins +attitude, or why he was so much more severe with the boy than he had +ever been with Zaidee. + +Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess, +toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry. +But the boy was different. Civilized man still usually lives in the +outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance +of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature +in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he +knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it. +His Lie still, you rascal, or Ill make you, voiced in its sternness +an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee. + +Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down +once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife +to kiss her good-by. + +Are you going out again? Her voice had a dull patience in it and her +eyes refused to meet his. + +Yes; did you want me for anything special? + +He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue +eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by +his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at +Lois insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of +the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. +Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. +Justins discarded one had passed through every stage of decent +finessethe turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined +sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife +in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship +still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude +to make a new and opulent person of him. + +No, of course I dont want you for anything specialshe spoke in a +monotone. I only thought you were going to stay home. + +Ive got to go to Leverichs, and I want to speak to Selden about the +house first. I promised him Id stop there. + +They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the +hill, and Selden was the architect. + +You have been out every night this weekthere was a suspicion of +tears in her voice. I do so hate to be left alone. + +You have Dosia. + +Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I cant make out +that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she +looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home +this eveningwont you, dear? + +I cantI wish I could. He said the words mechanically, for he was +burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. I must be at +Seldens by half-past eight. + +It is only a quarter-past nowyou can walk there in five minutes. Do +sit down for a moment. I dont get any chance to talk to you at all, and +you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any +moreexcept to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night. + +Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and +held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all +the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrasther +rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves +of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful, +but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily +repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his +hat against it. She lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to +him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a +loss + +Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his +children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness +of their possession lately,the sweetness that consists in watching the +unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,but when he +had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a +hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious +moments waste. He could hear Zaidees gentle little voice repeating her +mothers perfunctory extenuation: Poor daddys nervous; come away, +Redge! + +I hope youll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the +stairs, said Lois suddenly. + +Hell put one there if he can. + +If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I dont want +the house if he cant put the closet in. I + +All right. Ive got to go now. If he had cared to think about it, he +might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as +these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from +her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far +into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried +him from her. + +The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of +prosperity and the forerunner of large expendituresof which the house +on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it +were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with the +principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard +not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody +knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality, +there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions +has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a +sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently +assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the main one. + +The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the +factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from +that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute +are from the twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole +orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing +that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of +enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping +enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money +came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as +the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a +hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but +hands must be paid off on Saturday night; there had been one Saturday +when there had been what Leverich called tall hustling by him and +Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had +thought of his backers as men of millionswith that easy, assured +confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions +were in the concrete, solid and goldena bottomless store in reserve. +He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant +quality, running like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, +there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both +Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little +butter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover +an emergency was a daily expedientthe ability to do so ranked as a +part of ones assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large +sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the business +seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To +his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade passed and +repassed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated +attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after +the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind +of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and +the childrens. + +Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in +order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of +social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through +everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but +a woman. His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her +thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less +of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick +feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was +merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if +her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him +tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling +that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because +she must wait until night to set herself right with him again. At those +times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her childrenher +only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town +and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded +streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But +when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed +the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mothers +absence. + +She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening +retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first +surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown +to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal +annoyance,like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,that measurably lessened the +joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man +must have patience with his wifes complainings, and try always to +remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it, +which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never +complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him. + +Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into +the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the +door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was +inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired +in an old dress suit, the conventional lines of which, with the stiff +expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature +still more pronounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little +drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back +as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm +stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet +he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift +pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from +the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to +him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring +earnestness. + +Well, you are all right, he said, after the first greetings; Miss +Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South Id say +just what I thought of you, but Im afraid to up here; folks are too +careful about complimentin for me. When I see a young lady like +you,or like Mrs. Alexander, here, he rose and bowed gallantly, I +want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. Theres +nothing so beautiful on Gods earth to me as a beautiful womanunless +its a mother. A mother doesnt need to have a complexion if shes got +the mother spirit shinin out of her. I had a mother oncea better +never lived. Shes dead. + +That is very sad, said Lois, in the pause that followed this +announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and +Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful +communing. + +Yes, maam, said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs +back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it. + +How is your wife? asked Dosia. Have you seen her lately? + +I was home for a week around Christmas-time, answered Mr. Cater. Its +sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short periodat least, I +find it so. I dont know _as_ it pays, except as something to look +forward to before youve done it; theres a good deal in that. My wife +lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it +seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home. + +I should think she would want to stay here with you, said Dosia. + +Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. Well, the fact is, he +conceded, my wifes powerful fond of her family. Theres nothing +against a woman being fond of her family. + +Oh, no, said Lois. + +No, maam. My wifes a mighty fine woman. If Id had the luck to belong +to her familybut seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to +me crops up, I expect, when I aint countin on it. She did bring the +children and try livin up here in a flat the first year I went into the +business, but it made her so pinin she had to go back; she wasnt used +to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_ +know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin sort of old and agin, +and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin her, I +reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin a +gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; hed promised +her to quit. Her sisters husband, Jim Pierce, hed lit out before. Now, +theres the other brother, Sattersonhes a mighty fine fellow, six +foot two in his stockins, but he doesnt _do_ anything. Just drinks. My +wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I dont blame any woman +for being devoted to her familyshows heart. + +Why, yes, I suppose so, said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an +inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory +relations-in-law lived on Mr. Caters earnings; she knew his wife as a +pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth. + +After all, there isnt much in a man, when you get down to it, to +interest a woman, continued Mr. Cater impartially. She wants him to +think of _her_; of cose its his business to. I had a sort of set idea +to begin onbut theres nothin in life so wreckin as a set idea; Ive +found that out. Youve got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and +turn it sos you can see to keep on your windin way without runnin +down your fellow-beinsisnt that so? I dont blame any woman for +findin out that a man doesnt always make up for home and motherI +dont know that I always yearn for my own society. His inscrutable +expression changed to a smile. I reckon you wont yearn for it, either, +if I go on talkin in this way. + +Oh, yes, I will, said Dosia, dimpling. Did you see my father and +mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look? + +Whyabout the same as usual, replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a +swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly +materialized itself to Dosia. I promised them Id come and see youand +meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosias comin here that I got +acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander, he continued, turning to +Lois. Hes a mighty fine man. He and I, were choppin at the same log, +so to speak, only hes takin side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon +hes got a pretty good backin? + +Oh, yes, affirmed Lois. + +Yes, maam. Of course, he doesnt talk about it. I havent seen Mr. +Alexander much for a couple of weeks; hes been busy and Ive been +busywe lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his +friendsMr. Leverich for oneslightly in the way of business. Mr. +MartinMr. Martins a man _nobody_ knows moren slightly. You would not +think he was such a smart business man, would you? Hes so sort of small +and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. But _I_ dont +care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake +in all they touch. Now you think Im hard on him, dont you? He +hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois: +Martin sort of reminds me of somethin that happened with my two boys +when I was home at Christmas. Theyre little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, +right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you. + +They are dear little fellows, said Dosia warmly. + +They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind em, and Angythats +the eldest, hes sixwas stoppin the way; so I says to him, Whats +stoppin you, son? and he answers: Oh, Im carryin up Jims cake and +my cake, and Im eatin _Jims cake now_. Thats like Martin for all +the worldalways carryin somebodys cake for em, and swallowin it on +the way. Well, doesnt it seem good to be lookin at you again, Miss +Dosia! But Im sorry Alexander isnt in, too. + +Oh, I hope hell come before you leave, returned Lois. It seemed a +foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the +nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure, +half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There +was a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive +recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over +which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect +on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, +when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent. + +Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while +Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of +Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word home +carried such suggested association that Dosia half forgot that it had +never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy. + +When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and +Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the +others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more. + +Well, this is comfort, he said, with a sort of wistful gratitude. +Ive been thinkin twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train, +but Im sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young +ladies takin all this trouble for mewell, I just cant tell you how I +appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside. + +You must get pretty lonely sometimes, said Lois kindly, with a sudden +sympathy for something in his tone. + +He nodded slowly. Well, yes, I do; but Ive quit thinkin of it, as a +rule. I reckon Ive got about as much as I deserve in this world, when +you come to sizin things up. If you get to pityin yourself, you slump; +you slump all _to_ piecesaint no mortal good to yourself nor anybody +else. Ive found _that_ out. + +You seem to find out a good many things, said Lois, with a twinge of +assent. + +Well, yes, I do. His face relaxed in a pleased smile. Keep addin to +my collection daily; but it isnt cheap, no more than other +collectincosts money. Girard saysby the way, I never asked you if +you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the +train. I didnt know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this +rabbits moren good. I havent had one like it since I was with Girard +last year. + +No, I do not know anyone by that name, said Lois a little wearily. + +Then youd ought to; Miss Dosia, here, shed ought to. Hes a _man_. +Young, too, just the kind shed like. Hes related to the Wilmots, Judge +Wilmots family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. +His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their +money. Kind of wearin to hear that, aint it? I get tired of it myself. +I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their moneyor are +a-losin it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody thats +risin into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible +to walk on somethin that isnt a down grade. + +How about Mr. Girard? asked Dosia. + +Oh, well, hes all right. Hes on an up grade, if anybody ever +wasnow. But I wouldnt want a boy of mine to go through what he has, +though its made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after +theyd moved way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard +time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I dont +know that she wrote to the rest of em. I dont know but what her mind +got sort of wanderin when she fell sick. She died at a little town in +Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasnt anyone to look after the +child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, +and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat +him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor +little chap, brought up tender by a lovin mother, used to crawl into +the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry +his heart out till he got quiet. He told me onceGirard, he hardly ever +talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a +snow-stormhe told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas +story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into +the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_. + +How did he get away? asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the +boys little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although +the hurt had been over so long ago. + +Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didnt tell me the whole +of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he +went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own +people, too. Then he was war correspondent in CubaI guess some of the +wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on +some government business; hes a personal friend of the President. Hes +young, too, not moren twenty-eight. Hes bound to get ahead at whatever +he sets himself to. But hes got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly +kill a big Swede once that was wallopin a sick horse. What you laughin +at, Miss Dosia? I reckon were all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isnt +_that_ time, is it? He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at +the clock that was striking. + +Im afraid it is, affirmed Lois. + +Then Ive got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. Tisnt +manners to eat and run, I know, but He had risen and was swiftly +putting on his coat in the hall. Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can +get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin. +Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your +hospitality; I do _so_. I He was loping down the path already, his +long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight. +Dosia called after him mischievously, Youd better wait until the +twelve-three, before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air +was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the +lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Caters presence had been. + +She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains +of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois +wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having +taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time +than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the +interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have +relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a +sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any +reminiscence whatever. + +He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and surprised to find +traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late. + +Mr. Cater has been here, announced Lois, in explanation. + +Cater! Im sorry to have missed him. + +He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not go until eleven, and +I was sure you would be in before that. + +Well, I meant to be. + +Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,something prompted her +against her will to say what had been rankling in her memory,he +thinks Mr. Martin is like a crab, and that he takes people in between +his claws and pinches them. I wish youd be careful. + +Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. He will not pinch me, at +all events, he said shortly. After a moments pause he made an effort +to return to his former manner, but with an altered tone: + +Im sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting with Selden +about the house; you can have the closet. After that we were all talking +at Leverichs. He had a friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow, +extraordinarily interesting; he was giving us points on the South +American trade. Hes going to be of great use to us, he goes down there +again in the spring. Hes a fine-looking fellow, by the way, tall and +well set up; he reminds me of Brent, Loisyou remember him? The same +kind of bright, resolute face; only this mans browner. + +Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, Justin turned to +Dosia, who had slipped back into the room to look under the table and +chairs for a blue bow that had fallen from her hair. She stood now in +the doorway with it in her hand. + +He came up from the South the same day you did last fall, Dosia, he was +in that wreck. It must have been a horrible thing. Justin broke off at +the retrospection of the narrative. + +Yes, said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the door for support. + +You were fortunate to get off so well. Absorbed in his own recital, +Justin did not observe her. He was going from one car to another when +the train went off the trestleI dont wonder you would never talk +about it, Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There was a +poor young girl who was alone, like youhe didnt know what became of +her; he was ill himself in the hospital for two weeks afterwards. His +description of the whole thing was extraordinarily vivid. Justin was +now bolting windows and putting out lights as he talked. You two girls +must go to bed at once; its nearly twelve. + +What was his name? asked Dosia. + +His name? Why, I thought Id told you. His names GirardBailey +Girard. + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +Reginald has the measles. + +Lois made the announcement breathlessly, as she stood outside of the +drawing-room, addressing the visitors who sat on the sofa, talking to +Dosia. + +The doctor has just gone, and he says it is the measles. I dont +suppose I had better come in the room. There was a tone of resentment +in her voice which seemed to originate in the idea of being excluded; in +reality, it was caused by the bitter thought that she had known for a +couple of days that Redge was not well, and that his father had been +exacting with him. I really suppose I had better not come in. + +Oh, dont mind me! Mrs. Leverich, gorgeous in velvet and furs, spoke +reassuringly. There are no children at our house, and Ive had the +measles. + +Of course, its not scarlet fever, continued Lois, dropping into a +chair, or diphtheria. I suppose Zaidee will get it, and we have to be +quarantined. I dont know what to do about you, Dosia. She was feeling +the fell blow of a contagious disease, which upsets every previously +stable condition. + +Ive had the measles, said the girl, but she added with quick anxiety: +There are my lessons; do you suppose it will make any difference about +them? I dont see how I can lose them now, and theres that concert +Saturday. + +If were quarantined, youre quarantined, said Lois tersely. If there +was _any_ place where you could go and stay + +Mrs. Alexander, let her come to me, said Mrs. Leverich warmly. Id +love to have her; I _really_ would. She can keep up with her lessons and +engagements just the same then. You know, Im always so happy when I can +have a young girl in the house; and as for Mr. Leverich, nothing pleases +him better. Go and pack your trunk at once, my dear, and well take it +on the carriage as we go back. + +Dosia looked hesitatingly at Lois. + +WhyI do not know, said Lois, surprised, yet considering. + +But _I_ do. Mrs. Leverich spoke with a cordial authority that, after a +little more conversation, settled the matter. + +Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise little help of +Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from the closet and toilet +articles from the dressing-table, and in her efforts dropped the red +ribbon from her hair into the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, +swift huggings from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this +transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was something on +her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor below, she ran down to speak to +her, half dressed: Lois, I hate to leave you here alone; I dont mind +being kept from things, really and truly. Let me stay and help you with +dear little Redge. For once her sympathy made her natural. + +No, you had better go, said Lois. She had but one desireto be left +at liberty at last with her own. She added, to avoid further pleading: + +I would rather be alone. + +Oh! exclaimed Dosia, shrinking. But conscience had unexpectedly +claimed her, and she went on, hesitantly, with a painful timidity, her +color coming and going: + +I wanted to askdo you think I ought to go to Mrs. Leverichs, after +what you said? Wont Mr. Barr be there? + +In the whole realm of the mothers mind there was no room for anything +at present but her measles-smitten household. She looked at Dosia as if +making an effort to understand. Why, yes, I suppose he will be there. +Just dont have anything to do with him if you dont want to. You will +not need to; he is out of the house most of the time, anyway. + +Oh, very well, assented Dosia, chilled and yet relieved. The blood of +youth was already running riot at the delightful prospect of another +change. But she slipped into the nursery to kiss poor little feverish +Redge good-by, and leaned out of the carriage that was driving her away +to wave her hand again and again to Zaidee, whose red cheeks and little +snub-nose were pressed close to the window-pane. + +Mrs. Leverich was a woman who was somewhat below par in birth and +education, devoid of certain finer instincts, and used to an overflow of +luxury in her daily living that amounted sometimes to vulgar display. To +balance this, she was still handsome, if somewhat too stout, and +hospitable to a superlative degree. Staying company was a necessity to +her happiness. She had an absolute passion for making other people +comfortable, and surrounded her guests with a kindness and forethought +so enveloping that it almost spoiled them for contact afterwards with a +rude world. She really possessed in this regard an unselfish +good-heartedness, mingled with a sort of vanity that was pleased with +applause at its manipulations; her own comfort was indifferent to her +beside the subtler and warmer pleasure of being the source of good to +others. It is no figure of speech to say that she was willing to do +anything to promote the welfare of her guests; it was no hardship to +give up her own way in their interests, or to do any act, however tiring +and distasteful, that gave pleasure to anyone. She hated cards, yet she +would play long, tedious games with beaming incompetence, to make up a +hand; she disliked the smell of tobacco, but was never satisfied until +every man around her was happily supplied with cigars or pipes. Music +was a jangle to her, and any book above the caliber of the fiction which +displays a low-necked authoress upon the cover a weariness indeed; but +she would labor unceasingly to place both music and literature within +the reach of her guests. She had windows opened when she herself was +chilly, and fires lighted when she was suffering with the heat; she took +long drives in the hot sun when she would have much preferred a nap; she +chaperoned girls uncomplainingly until five oclock in the morning. The +least wish of a guest, spoken or divined, was gratified if within her +power. It is true that she had a retinue of servants at her command, +but, if necessary, she would have served her guests with her own hands, +and had been known to do so. There was only one drawback to her +hospitalityshe welcomed, but did not speed the parting guest. It was +difficult indeed to leave without a pitched battle, and the effort of +temporary disunion was so great as sometimes to result in a permanent +rupture of friendship. Her I seeyou dont want to stay with us any +longer voiced that injured feeling which blasts whatever it comes in +contact with, and which disclaimers serve only to heighten. Once away +from her, her interest in the former guest ceased almost entirely, no +matter how close the association had been under her roof; outside of it +everyone was lost in a haze which called for a distinct and wearying +effort, seldom undertaken, to penetrate. + +In appearance she was on the Oriental type of her half-brother, Lawson +Barr, but with a softness, both of expression and contour, which he did +not possess. She was ten years older than he. Her motions and the tone +of her voice were languid. Her husbandwho enjoyed the benefits of +being the chief and permanent guest in this householdwas extremely +fond of her, and proud of her beauty and popularity. Leverich was one of +those coarse-seeming and coarse-acting men who, nevertheless, come of a +race of gentlefolk, and who have innately, and no matter how much they +may choose to overlay the fact, certain traditions. He had been known to +say, in rebuttal of some criticism on his wifes breeding, what was +quite truethat she was good enough for _him_; but he had, underneath, +a little contempt for her because she was. It was one of the traditions +that a man should find a quality in his wife to revere. + +Leverich liked to surround his wife with luxuries, to give her +everything that money could buy and that her gently sensuous temperament +craved. Her attachment was riveted to him by gifts of clothing and +jewelry and bric--brac as well as moneysuch things being to her the +only tangible evidences of affection. Dosia had hitherto seen the house +only as a caller. She was impressed now by the richness of the +furnishings above, as she was led up to her room, a large, many-windowed +apartment on the second floor. It was all a gleam of polished mahogany, +and brass and mirrors and silver toilet articles, blended with rose-silk +draperies; the alcoved bed was spread with a flowered silk counterpane, +the floors covered with rich Eastern rugs; easy-chairs and low tables +spread with books dotted the room; a couch piled high with down cushions +stood at a seductive angle. A maid glided forward to take Dosias hat +and cloak, while another knelt at the hearth to light the logs upon the +brass andirons, and Mrs. Leverich came in and out in an overflow of +solicitude. + +I really think you had better rest. You _must_ be tired. No, of +courseat Dosias laughing remonstrancethe drive was nothing, but +the shocka shock like that tells on you before you know it. Here comes +your trunk; have you the key? Elizabeth, unpack Miss Dosias trunk, and +get out a dressing-gown for her. Im going to insist on your lying down +on the lounge for a while. Now, dont do that, Elizabeth will take off +your shoes for you. And, Amelia,this to the maid at the +hearth,bring up some tea and biscuits. No, you dont care for tea? +Well, a glass of sherry, then, and some hothouse grapes. My dear +Dosia,youll let me call you Dosia, wont you?you may not feel the +need of it now, but it will do you good. Im not going to stay with you, +Ill just move this little table with the magazines on it near you, and +leave you to rest; but first I want to show you this. She opened the +door of a smaller, hexagonal apartment adjoining. Im going to turn it +into a music-room for you. + +Oh, Mrs. Leverich! protested Dosia, in amazement. + +Ive been thinking of it all the way home in the carriage. Of course, +you wont want to practice down-stairs, where people are coming in and +out all the time; it would be very annoying to you. This has been used +as an extra dressing-room. I shall have those thick hangings taken down +and the furniture moved out, and put in light chairs and a cottage +piano, and a few palms over by the window. Youll see! + +But, Mrs. Leverich + +Now, dont say a _word_; its all settled. Elizabeth will come to you +when its time to dress, so you need give yourself no anxiety about +that. Just let me draw this coverlet over you and tuck your feet in. +Now, how sweet you do look, to be sure! + +Dosia did look sweet, and as comfortable and soft as a kitten. The +light-blue kimono of outing flannel,of which she had been half ashamed +when the maid unpacked it,though cheap, was becoming; her loosened +hair fell over the blended pillows and the rosy coverlet. The wood fire +at which she gazed crackled and sent out the pungent, aromatic smell of +Southern pine, which mingled with the perfume of a bunch of violets on +the table near the golden sherry in its crystal glass, and the plate of +white and reddish grapes. There was the unaccustomed stillness of a +large, well-appointed house, where the walls were deadened to sound, and +the floors had thick-piled rugs upon them, and the servants walked with +soft-shod feet. Such luxurious well-being had never been Dosias before. +This was like being in a fairy palace, where you had only to clap your +hands to get anything you wished for. And the most charming thing about +the fairy palace was that there you always met the prince. + +This girl was so constituted that, except in the first flush of +excitement incident to her entrance into this new sphere, she must have +always some heart-warm thought, some little inner pleasure of her own, +to make the larger one serve. Dosia knew now that she was to meet the +true prince. This was the house he visited; all this outer circle of +comfort was but the prelude to lovethat mysterious and intangible love +that made you happy ever after. She was glad that she had kept hold of +that hand, and had not let herself be drawn away by lesser ties. Her +day-dream was to bewitch and dazzle him, to compel him to her +attraction; a dozen situations, based on that first idea of his +recognition of her in some noble deed, occupied her happy mind; in all +moments of extra exaltation she brought out the thought and played with +it and hugged it to her. She had yet to learn how few things happen as +we imagine them. + +In the midst of her half-drowsy musings, the door behind her burst open; +suddenly a big collie-dog bounded in. He was licking her cheeks, when a +sharp whistle called him back, and the door was instantly closed again. +Dosia knew that the dog was Lawsons. She sprang up and locked the door, +but her dream had vanished. She had a tingling consciousness that she +was to meet Lawson at dinner. She made up her mind to be very dignified +and cool toward him; she rehearsed the manner in which her eyelashes +would fall, the politely bored expression of her forced attention, the +casual tips of her fingers as they touched his in the conventional +handshake of greetingall of which would emphasize the fact that he had +now no particular interest for her, if, indeed, he had ever had any. + +But, after all, he was not at dinner, which was a relief, and yet a +disappointment: when you have sharpened your weapons, it is only natural +to want to use them. Lawson did not appear the next day, nor the next. +Once she heard him coming in very late at night, and in the morning he +had gone before she breakfasted. A couple of times in the late +afternoon, when the dog came trotting ahead through the hall, she had +slipped aside, breathless, as from some peril escaped. It was the third +day after her arrival that he suddenly made his appearance in the +drawing-room, where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of +music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought the air too damp +for Dosia. + +She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she had prefigured, +and could have flagellated herself for the color that she felt +enveloping her from brow to throat under his cool, appraising eyes, as +he bent over the piano as if to help her with her search. + +What do you wish to find? he asked in a businesslike way. Perhaps I +can assist you. + +Thank you, it isnt necessary. + +She held her head at an unresponsive angle involuntarily, so that she +might not see his face, which had struck her as unexpectedly younger and +better-looking than hitherto. + +I see that my sister has fitted up a little music-room for you. Have +you done much practicing there yet? + +Some. + +You are not homesick in your new quarters? + +No. + +Let me hold that portfolio for you. He interposed a dexterous hand. +Oh, dont thank meyou see, if you drop it, courtesy will oblige me to +pick up all the music. This is the first time weve met since you have +been in the house; Ive been so patient that I deserve more than to have +little cold, hard monosyllables thrown at me. + +Patient! + +Havent I seen you slip out of the way when you thought I was coming? +Im accustomed to the phenomenon. The lightness of his tone did not +hide the bitter strain under it. Really, Im not lacking in perception. +I wished to give you time to get inured to the sad fact that I live +here; and you need not have changed the time for your lessons last week, +for I have no regular time for my daily exodus at present. If you _will_ +keep your head so persistently turned away, you might as well utilize +the position. Play me something. + +No, you play for me, returned Dosia, glad of the chance to divert his +attention from her. + +I might play Greeting, since Im not going to get any. + +He seated himself on the piano-bench she vacated, and played a few +strains absently; there was that in the low, sweet chords among which +his fingers strayed that could not but enchain. She forgot her aloofness +to listen. Presently he said: + +Who is my rival? + +What do you mean? She started up, and stood with both arms resting on +the lower end of the grand piano, staring at him. + +I could not think that blush was for methat beautiful color that +stole over you when I came in. It couldnt be for me, when you have +avoided me so pointedly. So I concluded, of course, that it was either +the reflection from that brick wall out there, or was called forth by +the thought of my rival. + +I will not say that it was the brick wall, said Dosia, yielding to the +light, heady spirit he always roused in her, with, also, the little +under-knowledge of her secret dream. + +Then I will not say it was the rival, said Lawson. He added in a lower +tone: And I wouldnt give it up to any rival; I saw itit was mine. + +You claim a great deal, returned Dosia, wishing that she had the +strength of mind to go and leave him, yet loath to lose a moment of this +converse. + +He shook his head as he answered gently: No, you are mistaken there; I +claim nothing. I have no rightsonly privileges. I hope its going to +be my privilege to have a little of your charming society in the next +few days. I shall be at home, perforce; Ive lost my position. + +Oh, Im sorry! said Dosia, with her quick sympathy. He raised one hand +deprecatingly, while the other still weaved in and out in a pianissimo +accompaniment. + +Sorry? For me? Oh, thats not the thing to say, at all. You should +condemn my inability to keep the place. + +Why do you talk like this? asked Dosia, with a pained feeling. + +Why do you run when you see me coming? He flashed a quizzical glance +at her. + +I dont, she began to say, but her words trailed off into an +inarticulate murmur. + +He had played a chord or two more to her silence before he stopped to +lean forward and say: + +Why did you avoid me on the train? You need not trouble yourself to +answer. Some kind person had warned you against being too polite to +meand you took the warning like a good little girl. It has been borne +in upon me quite a number of times that I do not exactly command respect +in this community. I assure you that I know my place. + +But, oh, why dont you _make_ people respect you? cried Dosia. Why +dont you make them? If you really tryoh, if I were a man, I wouldnt +sit quietly and say such things. You can do anything if you really try. + +Can you? He smiled with indulgence at her copy-book wisdom. Well, +perhaps you can, if theres sufficient impetus to the effort. There +really isnt with me. When I was a boyyoull tire yourself if you +stand up any longer. Come and sit over here by the fire. + +She followed half mechanically to the sofa on which he arranged the +cushions for her, seating himself in the other corner, where he leaned +forward, looking, not at her, but at the fire. His personality was so +strong that each inch that lessened the distance between her and that +lithe, sinewy figure and the dark Oriental face brought a corresponding +thrill of magnetism to Dosiaa subtle excitement which drew her into +its spell. The confusion which had clouded her at first was gone; she +felt luminously clear, in preparation for some great moment of +confidence, in which her mission would be to help and sustain. She broke +the silence presently to say, with a sweet and halting diffidence, +through which her earnestness showed: + +I want you to tell me. You began to sayI want to know about when you +were a boy. + +When I was a boy I made a wrong start. Heaven knows, it wasnt my +fault! I was good enough before thatreligiously inclined! He leaned +forward and struck a log with one of the fire-irons, sending a shower of +sparks flying upward. Where do you think I learned half the bad I know? +At a camp-meeting! But I wont go back to the pastits a mistake. +Only, I came here literally on suspicion. + +Yes, said Dosia, with her clear spirit-voice; and you tried to work +up from under it. + +Lawson dropped his chin into his hands, looking moodily ahead. Im +afraid not always. Sometimes the contrary. + +Oh, oh, breathed Dosia, in a whisper. + +If you want me to tell you the truth! Your relatives are quite right +in ordering you to avoid me. There has never been anybody, you see, to +really care whether I kept straight or not. + +Your sister? + +[Illustration: _He played a chord or two more to her silence_] + +Lawson shrugged his shoulders. It would, of course, be pleasanter for +Myra if she hadnt me on her mind, and Leverich has done his best, I +suppose. Im not groaningjust telling you the bare facts. Living on +suspicion is demoralizing in the long run, thats all; one lives down +to an opinion as well as up to it, you know. Theres never been anyone, +since I was a child, to really believe in me, so theres nobody to be +disappointed. + +_I_ will believe in you, said Dosia, with the vibrating tone of her +emotion. Her clear eyes looked at his as if to convey strength and +warmth and all that was uplifting straight to his heart. + +You had better not. + +I will believe in you! Her tone had even greater insistence. I know +what it ismyselfto be with those who do not care. You are not as +other people think you! You can be good and noble. You canher voice +sank to a whisperresist temptation. If one praysit helps; I know +that. Her voice rose steadily again, after a tremulous silence: You +can never say again that no one believes in you, for I believe in you. + +And care? asked Lawson. + +His eyes glittered and his face worked with some unusual emotion. + +And care, assented Dosia, with the same unwavering eyes and serious, +childlike candor of tone. + +He stooped and gently pressed his lips to her hand as it lay upon her +gown. You are the very sweetest child! I He stopped abruptly, and +walked away to the window. The next moment Mrs. Leverich was rustling +into the room. + +If she suspected an interview too confidential, she showed nothing of it +in her manner. She had come back to take her guest out driving, after +allthe sun was shining. Dosia ran to get ready, tinglingwas it from +the exaltation or the excitement of this interview, with its unexpected +compact? She trembled with the pathos of it all. She passed each phase +of it rapidly before her mind, to convince herself that there was +nothing in words or feeling, no, nor in that reverential homage of +Lawsons, that could be interpreted as disloyalty to the unknown to whom +her future belonged. + +Mrs. Leverich was waiting with a magnificent wrap of velvet and fur for +Dosia to put on in the carriage over her street costume. + +I was sure you were not warm enough yesterday, she explained. She +leaned forward to call to the coachman: James, you may drive first to +Bennings. We are going to get some chocolates to take with us, dear; I +know girls always enjoy themselves more if there is a box of chocolates +handy. + +Oh, Mrs. Leverich! said Dosia gratefully. + +And we will stop at the greenhouse and get some flowers for you to wear +to-night at dinner; you know, George Sutton is coming. I want you to +look particularly well. + +I dont care to look particularly well for _him_, objected Dosia, +stiffening. + +No, of course, you dont _need_ to; but, still, a girl should always +look as pretty as she _can_; she can never tell who is going to see her. +James, ask at the express-office if there are any packages. I sent for +some of the new books. Yes, that is for me. Now, my dear, youll have +something nice to read. + +You are too good, Mrs. Leverich; you are just spoiling me, said Dosia. + +In these three days she had been the recipient of so many gifts and +favors that it was difficult to know how to vary her expression of +gratitude. She had already been presented with a white China silk +tea-gown, the scores of two of the latest light operas, and an amethyst +belt-pin. The little music-room had been fitted out appropriately from +floor to ceiling, and framed with palms; Mrs. Leverich had spent the +whole of one morning with a corps of servants, planning, directing, and +approving. Dosia had hardly time to frame a wish before it was +forestalled. + +It is such a comfort to me to have you here, continued Mrs. Leverich, +sinking back among her cushions. You may take the Five-mile Drive, +James. If I had only had a daughter! I said this morning to Mr. +Leverich, I am going to pretend shes my daughter while shes here. +You dont mind, dear? You will let me have you for my very own? + +Yes, indeed, answered Dosia, with the warmth of youth. + +I have never wished for a son. Boys are a terrible responsibility. +There is Lawson. + +Yes, said Dosia, as she paused. + +He has always been such a trial. We have given him every advantageand +he _has_ every advantage naturally; but its no use. Mr. Leverich says +he will make one more effort for him, and if that is no use he must go. +We have simply done all we can. I would not speak so openly to you if +you had not been staying in the house, but you could not help hearing. + +Hearing? + +Yes, these nights when he has come home so late. George Sutton brought +him home Tuesday night from the trainhe couldnt walk alone. I was so +ashamed at the noise! + +Oh! breathed Dosia in a horrified undertone. She added, Has he always +been like this? + +More or less. At first it was only when he went away; but he couldnt +keep any position long, because he _would_ go away for days and days at +a stretch. And now it is getting to be_any_ time. Im sure we have +done everything in this world to keep it quiet. And Lawson has every +advantage naturally; it is only thisdrinking. Of course, no one can +have any confidence in him; I always felt that it was hopeless, from the +first. + +No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation as a ray of +light gilding this dark and slimy morass, the sight of which had +unexpectedly revolted her. In Balderville only the lower class of +inhabitants drank; no young man of respectability or position was to be +seen among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of her through +which she had promised to have faith? He had not posed as devoid of +offense; on the contrary, he had confessed to guilt, only she had not +quite understood. Sin as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite +decently presentable; it is only when it is particularized that the +monstrosities below are hideously revealed. + +It must be a great grief to you, she said now, with earnestness. + +Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much on my mind after +this winter; he has put his foot down. The nights I have passed! Im +always fancying that he is run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; +its the most dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream +on the way backdont forget; and those cakes at Mrs. Springersthey +were ordered yesterday. Where was I? I forget. Oh, yesthe most +dreadful strain! and I felt that I ought to speak about him to you, as +you are staying under my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after +the disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep up a +pretense any longer. You can see just what he is yourself. + +Yes, indeed, said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent. + +Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot bouillon on her +return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted the logs in Dosias +room with her own fat, white, beringed hands, and enveloped the girl +enthusiastically several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in +confirmation of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty about +the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely responsive in +spirit to the least show of it, material demonstrations were unnatural +to her; she was shy of being touched even by her own sex. It was only +with little children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in +caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster had appealed so +strongly to her imagination was partly because of the fact that the +comfort it conveyed transcended the strangeness of contact. To be +pressed now to a warm, semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds +of mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarrassed gratitude, which +she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate to the occasion. And she +was weary of trying to elude the vacillations of her mind. She would +keep her promise to Lawson,yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the +more he needed it,but she would be very careful, too; she would be +_very_ careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to spring into being. + +He was at the dinner as well as Mr. Sutton. The sixth person was Ada +Snow, with the well-bred composure which concealed her innate shyness, +and in the white dotted swiss she had worn for ten years past, ever +since she had graduated, in fact, and which still looked decently +presentable. Dosia was gay and conversational, as she was expected to +be, the party being hers; she had began to feel the daughter of luxury, +if not of Mrs. Leverich, and accepted the honors with the easily +accustomed grace that is born of admiration and security, conscious +every moment through it all of that bond between herself and Lawson. He +looked boyish and happy. Later, in a talk about skating, he offered to +teach her to skate the next day if the ice held, and Mrs. Leverich, to +whom Dosia looked, expecting her to invent some excuse, approved at +once, and planned to send for skates the first thing in the morning. His +quizzical eye seized unerringly on the signs of withdrawal in her, and +brought the blush of compunction to her cheek, while Mr. Leverich +jocosely deplored that he could not take the office of trainer instead. +Mr. Sutton, who had sat by her at dinner, and hovered amorously over her +in the way a girl detests in a man she does not care for, might have +been mysteriously rebuffed by the suggestion of Lawsons intimacy, for +he devoted himself for the rest of the short evening to Ada Snow, who +dropped into one of her statuesque angles on an ottoman, and talked to +him in her low, trained voice with modestly confidential deference, +until he left, quite early. His attention to Miss Snow had not kept him, +however, from picking up Dosias handkerchief twice when she happened to +drop it. + +Billy Snow created a diversion by coming in at half-past ten for his +sister, and stating casually that he had seen the doctors carriage +stopping at the Alexander house as he passed. + +As you passed _now_? cried Dosia, startled. Are the children worse? +An unacknowledged compunction, which she had felt through all her +pleasures, at leaving the sick household, sprang swiftly to the front. +Oh, Im so afraid Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there +at once and see! + +If they only had a telephone, began Mrs. Leverich, for the twentieth +time. I can send + +Oh, if I could only go myself! interrupted Dosia, looking utterly +miserable in her sudden wild anxiety. + +You could have the carriagebut James is asleep. Mrs. Leverich looked +almost as miserable as Dosia in her baffled hospitality. But if you +dont mind walking + +Nooh, no! + +Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some wraps in the hall; +Ill pin your dress up, so that you wont need to take the time to +change it. _Must_ you go, Ada? Then you can all walk down together. Mr. +Leverich would have offered to go with you himself, I know, +Dosia,wouldnt you, Joseph?if it were not for his cold. But Lawson +can take you, of _course_! + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, had plenty to keep +her hands busy, and yet, as there was no particular anxiety attaching to +the disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the +unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of thought at the +same time, so that little occupations really occupied only a small +corner of her mind, and the larger part was continually taken up with +the subject of larger interestherself. While she rocked the children +and sang to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, and +took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, she was +unceasingly traversing a country wherein she walked alone and in exile. +The quarantine had shut her in more rigorously upon herself; there were +now no distractions. Her husband was more anxious about the children +than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so much was thrown +upon her; he had wanted to get a trained nurse at once, but after her +assurances that she did not mind staying in, that her exertions did not +tire her, and that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted +this version without further question or comment, and went about his +affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her own department. It is +a well-known fact that quarantine, the observance of which is exacted +down to the last second of its limit from the women of a household, does +not affect the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin +thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as possible +about being much with the children. He stood obediently outside of the +nursery door and talked to them from there when Lois said, You had +better not come in. When she refused a service offered by him, he did +not press it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his +dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again to spend the +long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, at houses where there +were no children to be kept from contagion, and where he could talk to +men. He was really so busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in +any way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to be able to +leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, besides, a curious +hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously resentedshe seemed to +hold herself aloof from him, and there was no allurement to follow. That +temporary indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, +with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference because they do +allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship at willthis had been +pushed too far. It is a dangerous thing to let love slip away, even for +the pleasure of regaining it. + +It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should have to stand +alone now. She could have done this willingly if she had been by +herself, but to stand alone in this dual solitude, where she might have +had supportshe could not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with +the pity of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, +red-eyed, upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of her +effort. + +There is little provision made in most girlhood for that independence of +living which marriage unexpectedly forces upon a woman, in many +instances, in almost as great a degree as when she is thrown out into +the world upon her own resources. To be high and fine, rational and +spirited, cheerful and loving, quite by ones self, without audience or +applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the muscles are little +trained. A woman can reach almost any height on a spurt for praise or +recognition; but to get up, sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, +care for the children, order the meals, as a rational human being whose +business it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no +personality attached to itto have it taken for granted that she would +naturally order her life as suited her best, and desired no +interferenceit was like being pushed out into the cold. + +If Justins indifference was unexplainable to Lois, it was equally +mysterious to him that she expected daily to be urged to seek amusement, +to take something for her cold, to stay in if it were wet or to go out +if it were dry, to avoid overwork, not to sew too much, and to be sure +and rest in the afternoonall the little kindly round of womans +sympathies that keep the heart warm. Justin had been brought up in the +good old-fashioned way by a mother who, while requiring obedience and +honesty from her sons, never required them to think of anybody else. In +his conduct now he did entirely as he would be done by. He hated to be +noticed, himself, in little ways; he did as he pleased, with the +directness that is the inheritance of centuries of predominance, but he +had become affectionately parrot-wise in some of the sentences he found +were conducive to his wifes happiness. In his new absorption he had +forgotten the sentences; he was deeply occupied with his own affairs. +When Lois said to Zaidee, Mamma is busy; she cannot attend to you now, +she exemplified unconsciously her husbands present position toward +herself. Many men regard women primarily in the light of children; and +the more occupied Justin became in his own affairs, the more reluctant +he became to talk of them at home to this child who was his wife. Her +vivid surprise at normal conditions, the unnecessary worry and shallow +generalization of ignorance, irritated him. He became more and more +taciturn, though he was always kind and affectionate, even if his +kindness and affection lacked, as she felt, the true inner glow; but in +the state of mind which Lois had now made her own, no evidence of +affection, however great on the part of her husband, would have meant +anything to her more than momentarily, for it was seen afterwards +through a medium which at once distorted and nullified, and not even the +complete absorption in and surrender to herself that she craved could +have satisfied the insatiable. She was drifting to a place among the +great and terrible company of nerve-centered people, revolving wheels of +centripetal force, sweeping into their own restless orbit all with which +they come in contact as they go on their devastating way through the +universe. + +Dosia, on the night when she had hurried down to the house with Lawson +Barr, had found nothing out of the ordinary; the doctor had been delayed +until late by a case of more insistence, that was all. She came down, +however, on other evenings, luxuriously cloaked and wrapped, rosy and +smiling, with radiant eyes, and held rapid conversations with Lois +down-stairs, while Lawson waited in the hall, or sometimes went on +farther and came back for her. Lois herself had never considered Lawson +of importance, although she had warned Dosia against him; his +sympathetic manner now pleased her. As the children improved, the +measles threatened to become at once epidemic and more virulent in the +town, so that it was thought wise to avoid comment by having no +communication by daylight with the Alexander household. Dosia was thus, +for a few minutes at a time, Lois one social link with the outside +world, for Justin, as she said bitterly, told her nothing. After three +weeks of solitude and self-communing the barriers began to give way. + +She was glad to hear her husband come in one afternoon much earlier than +usual. Something had been said the day before about her going out for a +drive. Her heart beat at the sound of his voice, and she ran down-stairs +eagerly, but checked herself, as she had a way of doing lately, when she +came near him. Her face, devoid of expression, was lifted to his to be +kissed; for all her forbidding manner, she was ready to thaw if he would +only take the trouble to shine directly upon her. It was a beautiful +spring afternoon, and she felt the invading monitions of happiness, in +spite of herself, as he kissed her, saying at once hurriedly, if very +kindly: + +Ive got to dress and take the five-oclock train back to town. + +Oh! She was chilled to ice. Wont you be here to dinner? + +Why, no. Girarddo you remember my speaking of him? Hes sent me a +ticket for the Western Club dinner in town to-night. There will be fine +speaking; not that I care for that particularly, but it is really +important for me to be there. There are not many tickets; Im in luck to +get one. He stopped irresolutely. You dont mind my going? I thought +youd be with the children. + +No, I dont mind your going. She added under her breath, And it +wouldnt make any difference to you if I did. + +What did you say? + +Nothing. + +If it were any place to which you could have gone with me, I would have +refused. + +Oh! + +He looked at her uneasily, but said no more; she heard him whistling +softly as he was getting dressed. In reality his conscience was +uncomfortably pricking him. He felt that he had let her bear too much +alone, that he might have been more thoughtfulhe couldnt exactly tell +how. He registered a mental vow to take her out somewhere the very first +chance he got. + +He came in the nursery to say good-by to the children and to her. She +asked: + +What train will you take back to-night? + +I dont suppose I can get anything earlier than the twelve. + +You mean the one that gets here at a quarter to one? + +Yes, of course. Dont sit up for me. + +He was gone; the door had closed behind himhe was gone. Almost before +she realized it, he was gone. It could not beshe was not ready to have +him go yet! There were so many things she had meant to say to him. She +would have rushed to the door to call him back, but Redge cried out for +her. She took him from his crib and ran to the window with him, over the +floor that was strewed with play-thingsJustin was already nearly out +of sight. He must, he must, he _must_ come back again! He must. She +willed it so intensely that he must feel it, if he loved her, and come +back. If you willed things hard enough, they happened; people said so. +She was willing, willing, _willing_ him to come back. She watched the +clock, and listened for the sound of the passing train. Seven minutes to +walk to the stationseven minutes to walk back again, as she willed him +to come. Thirty minutes had passed; he had stopped here, there, or yon, +on his way home. An hourand he had not come! She had willed in vain. +He had gone. + +From six oclock until a quarter of one,until one oclock, for the +midnight train was always late,that was seven hours. Seven hours to +wait, seven hours to think and think. She gave the children their +supper; she laughed with them, she played with them, helped the nurse +undress them, sang them to sleep, with that dreadful undercurrent of +thinking all the time. She had her dinner, eating without knowing what +she ate, trying to take a long while at it. Afterwards she lighted the +lamp in the little drawing-room, took out her sewing, and sat down there +to wait. There were five hours and a half yet. + +There was a ring at the door-bell about eight oclock, which proved the +herald of little Mrs. Snow, holding in one hand a provisionary vial. + +No, thank you, I wont sit down, she said, in answer to Lois +invitation. I just ran over to see if you could let me have a little +cough medicine for William to-night, he has a little tickle in his +throat that keeps him coughing, I knew it was no use telling _him_ to +get any medicine, so I said to Bertha, Bertha, Im just going to run +over to Mrs. Alexanders and see if she can lend me a spoonful of cough +mixture. Ill have my bottle renewed to-morrow. + +Im sorry, said Lois, wondering at her power of suspending a +heartbreak, but we havent a drop left in the house. + +There is so much bronchitis around now, continued Mrs. Snow, oblivious +of the fact that the same impetus that had brought her as far as the +Alexanders would have taken her to the druggists. No, thank you; I +cant sit down. + +She stood by the mantel in a drooping attitude that gave her a plaintive +effect, in combination with her soft crinkled black garments and her +small white, delicate, finely wrinkled face. Mrs. Snow had, as a usual +thing, only two tones to her voicethe plaintive and the inquisitive; +the former was in evidence now. + +There is so much bronchitis around now. I think if you can take hold of +it at the first beginning, with a little cough medicine, when its just +a tickle in the throat, you can often save a great deal. + +I suppose you can, said Lois. She felt a vague duty of conversation. +Isnt William well? + +His mother shook her head. No, my dear, not at all, though he will not +own it. I ask him every time he comes in the house how he feels, and +sometimes he wont even answer me. She heaved a sigh. Youre not +looking well yourself, Mrs. Alexander; you mustnt take care of the +children too hard. + +Oh, nothing ever hurts _me_, said Lois in a hard voice. + +Im glad theyre so nearly well. I met Mr. Alexander to-night on his +way back to town. It was a pity you couldnt have gone with him; if you +had sent for me, I could have come and stayed with the children as well +as not. + +Oh, thank you, said Lois. + +I suppose you dont see much of Miss Dosia? + +No, not much as yet. + +Mrs. Snow cleared her throat deprecatingly. A number of people have +been asking me lately if she and Mr. Barr were engaged. + +Engaged! Why, of course not, exclaimed Lois contemptuously. There is +not the slightest question of such a thing; in fact, she dislikes him. +He simply takes her around because she is at his sisters. + +Oh! said Mrs. Snow, Miss Dosia dislikes Mr. Barrdoes she really, +now! Im sure I told everybody that I knew they couldnt be engaged, +although they do seem to be so much together. So she dislikes him; Ada +dislikes him, too. Theres something about Mr. Barr sowell, you cant +exactly tell what it is, can you, but its there; something thats not +exactly like a gentlemannot like Mr. Sutton. Ada likes Mr. Sutton so +much. Its such a relief to me to find that Miss Dosia is so sensible; +shes a sweet young girla little fond of attention, perhaps, but many +young girls _are_. No, I thank you, my dear, I cannot sit down, I _must_ +go now. I dont think youre looking well; you must be careful and not +overdo. + +Oh, nothing hurts me, said Lois again, with a peculiar little smile. +The insinuation about Dosia did no more than swell the undercurrent of +bitterness by another unnecessary drop. + +And Mrs. Snow was gone. Lois had not wanted her, but how alone it was +now! Even Mrs. Snow had seen that she did not look wellhad pitied her. + +The children were asleep up-stairs, the maids were in the kitchen. The +clock in the hall ticked. People walked past the house: a man +aloneanother man; young people, laughing and catching up with those +ahead; some shuffling, hobbling toilers; then the light step of a woman +returning from work; then another man. Occasionally, but not often, a +carriage rolled down the street. The footsteps were always clear and +distinct from the corner below to the upper crossing; when it was a +train-time, there were more footsteps coming and goingbetween trains +only the solitary footsteps again. She heard the man in the house across +the street run up the steps to his front door, and turn the key in the +lock. The door opened and shut behind him. The clock in the hall struck +the half-hourit was half-past eight. Oh, if there had been a life-time +of misery in that last half-hour, what was there to come? An eternity, +an eternity of desolation! + +If she were to will him now to come home, if in the midst of the +glittering lights and flowers he could hear her cry to him,_Justin, I +want you!_he would _have_ to come. Justin, I want you! She rose and +paced the floor, sobbing out the words. No, he would not hear herhe +did not want to hear her. Perhaps he was laughing now. She would have +gone to _him_, if he had wanted her, though she had had to crawl upon +her knees through thorns and briers. Ah, how she would have gone! A rush +of blinding tears filled her eyes. He did not care. She had been ready +to cling to him, and sob her heart out on his breast, and beg him to +love her and kiss her and stay with her, and he had not seen. She had +askedin the tone that mutely pleaded_You will not leave me so +long?_The train that gets here at a quarter to one? and he had +answered, Yes, of course. That was all. If her lips had touched his so +coldly when he had said good-by, it was because she had longed to have +him notice it, and ask her why. But he had not noticed the coldness, he +had not asked her why. He had not wanted any more warmth in her. He did +not care! + +There came swift moments in those long and passion-freighted hours when +the darkened, distorted vision cleared in wonderful flashes that brought +the healing of light. In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, +not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of +frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy +mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had +won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly +beloved, the true owner of her husbands heart, a woman whose work it +was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more +his helper, his lover. Even as this glimpse was shut out again, there +was the piercing thought: If that were real, and what her darkened eyes +beheld untrue! Things are what they are, no matter how ones distorted +vision sees them. If it were really true, no matter how she saw it now, +that she was a wife tenderly beloved, with happiness within her grasp, +and a miserable woman indeed only that she was blind to its +possibilities! She had said, _The train that gets here at a quarter to +one?_ with what a longing for him not to leave her, and he had answered, +_Yes, of course_. Nothing could make those words any different. And she +wanted him, and he did not carehe did not care. Justin, Justin! The +long, long, torturing fangs of self-pity had her by the throat. + +The house was silent, the children slept, the maids had gone up-stairs. +The hours wore on into the night. The footsteps passed up and down the +street only at long intervals. The air grew chill in the house. In the +quiet, the watcher could hear the trains far, far off across the flats. + +At twelve oclock the spring rain began to fall, gently at first, and +then in torrents, coming straight down with a rushing sound that blotted +out both trains and footsteps. And the train was late, as she had said +it would be, it was after one oclock when Justin ran up the steps with +that firm, quick tread of his, opened the door, and came in. His face +was bright and eager; he was full yet of the pleasure of the evening, +and anxious to make her a sharer of it. He turned to speak to his wife, +and the glow on his countenance died out instantly as with a breath from +the tomb. + +Lois sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing him. The light had gone out +in the lamp, and the one gas-burner above, with its meager flicker, cast +the room into the desolate half-shadows that speak of the late hours of +the night. She had worn a scarlet house-gown in the evening; the +trailing folds swept the floor around her slippered feet now, her bare +arms gleamed below the sleeves that only reached beyond the elbow. +Around her was flung a gray cloak, buttoned askew at the throat, and in +one of her folded hands she held a black lace scarf. Her face was white, +and her large eyes stared straight before her rigidly, yet with a wild +gleam in them; as he looked at her she rose and moved as if to pass him. + +He stepped forward with his dripping overcoat half off. + +Where are you going? + +She made no answer, but looked at him as she edged on farther to the +door. + +Where are you going? Answer me. + +Her lips stiffly framed the word: Out. + +Out! What do you mean? He spoke roughly, in a terrible anxiety and +anger mixed together. What are you working yourself up to all this +foolishness for? + +Again she did not answer. + +He went on more sternly, yet with an undercurrent of entreaty: + +Come in here and take off those things and be rational. Why do you look +at me like that? + +You dont careany more. + +Oh, if he would snatch her to him now, and press her to his breast, that +she might feel his protecting arms around her! If he would kiss her now +with the kisses she remembered, and love her, and comfort her, and send +this horrible spirit out of her! How could he not know that that was the +way to exorcise it, that it was what her spent soul craved? How could he +keep from putting his arms around her when she was in agony? + +Never in his life had her husband been less likely to do so. The wild +defiance in her eyes would have made any woman repulsive to him; he had +all a mans horror of a scene, mingled with a deeper disgust that she +should be the actress in it, and his anger was the more that he felt the +whole thing to be unnecessary. Underneath this anger, however, was the +sense of responsibility for his wifes welfare, such as one would have +for a child, no matter how outrageous. + +You dont care! She whispered the words again. + +No, I dont care for you when you act like this. His voice was even +sterner now; it was time that this travesty came to an end. + +She stared at him as before. Then Ill go! she said wildly, and +slipped past him out of the door and into the rain, running with swift +yet uncertain footsteps down the black, wet street, listening, listening +all the time for him to followlistening as she ran. She walked more +slowly now as she listened; she had gone nearly a block already toward +the river. Oh, would he let her go? For one awful moment she feared that +this phantasm might become a reality; and yet she knew, as well as she +knew that she lived, that he would not let it be so. Yes, yes, there was +his quick, sharp tread at last, gaining on her. He walked like the angry +man he was, but the sound brought a furtive thrill of bliss to her. How +strong he was when he was angry! He had had to notice her at last; he +could think of nothing but her now. + +She trembled as he came up to her. He only said in a matter-of-fact +tone, Its time to stop this now; youll get wet. He took her by the +arm and turned her around, heading for home; the mere touch of his +guiding hand on her arm sent warmth through her icy veins. She trembled +as her feet tottered beside his, her strength suddenly spent with the +breaking up of her long passion. + +Neither spoke as they walked home. When they were in the house again, he +unfastened her cloak with awkward fingers, and took the dripping scarf +from her wet hair, throwing them on a chair. + +She leaned her head upon his breast, clinging to him with an +inarticulate murmur for forgiveness, and he smoothed her hair for a +moment. She raised her face to his to be kissed, and he kissed her. She +humbly asked nothing; she would be satisfied with anything now. She went +up to her room, as he bade her, and when she was in bed, he came and sat +down by her, and held the hand she mutely placed in his, as her +imploring eyes asked. But he had to put a force upon himself to do it. +The whole play was distasteful and repugnant beyond words to him; it +weakened every bond that bound him to her. He sought for no +self-analyzing causes. He had so much care upon him now that more than +ever in his life before he needed diversion, sympathy, love, restrest +above everything else on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +To live in the same house, to meet not only at the accepted times, but +in all the little passing wayson the stairs, coming in and out of the +door; to meet also in all the little unpremeditated ways that are really +premeditatedthe going to the library for a book, the searching over +this, that, and the other, with all its pretended inconsequence and +surprise; the abstraction of two people from the same room at the same +time on different pretexts; the lingerings while the minutes grew toward +the hour, the sudden hurried partings at a foot-step, the reunion for +just a moment more when the foot-step did not come that wayall this +unnoticed and casual intercourse with its half-secrecy and hint of the +forbidden becomes a large factor in its relation to after-events, when +the participants are a man and a woman. There is no influence so little +regarded for the young by those in authority as the tremendous influence +of propinquity. + +Among all the social comings and goings at the Leverichs, the +excitement of Lawsons presence held its place with Dosia. The sudden +sight of his olive profile and his lithe figure, his cool, appraising +gaze, his Well, young lady? with its ironic tone that yet conveyed a +subtle kindness, his lazy, caressing expostulation, Why not, when we +are friends?these things made heart-beats that Dosia took pains to +assure herself were of a purely Platonic nature, when she stopped at +rare occasions to take tally of her emotions, though there was a +continual unacknowledged inner protest, in spite of her yielding, which +made her resolve each day to withdraw a little on the next. But they +never talked of love; they talked only of goodness, or art, or music, or +about the way you felt about different subjects, or little teasing +things, like why she drew her mouth down at the corners when he looked +at her, or why she had seemed to disapprove the night before. They were +bound together by the hope of higher things. She met him always in the +morning with the bright uplifting smile that said, I know you will +repay my confidencefor _I_ believe in you! + +I really wish Lawson would go away, said Mrs. Leverich, one day, as +the two sat over their afternoon tea together. + +Why? asked Dosia, with the suddenly concentrated composure his name +always brought her outwardly. I thought you said last week that he had +improved so much. + +Oh, yes, hes had one of his good streaks lately; and he _is_ a sweet +fellow when hes nicehe was the dearest _little_ boy! Lawson can twist +me around his little finger when he wants to; he knows that he can get +money out of me every time, even when he oughtnt to have it. But he +cant keep up this sort of thing long, you know, he is so restless; +theres bound to be a breakdown afterwards. I dread it; the breakdowns +get worse, now, every time. + +Perhaps there will be no breakdown, after all, said Dosia, in an even +voice, but with that sudden deep sensation of disenchantment which his +sisters words always brought to her, and which lay upon her spirit like +a living thing, dragging her fancy in chains. It was not alone Mrs. +Leverichs words, either, that had this power; when anyone spoke of +Lawson it brought the same displeasing uneasiness, followed by the +wonted eager remorsefulness later, when she saw him. But through each +phase one foundational sense held goodhe was not at all the kind of +man she would ever want to marry; the whole attraction of the situation +was in the fact that one could be so nobly intimate, and still keep off +the danger-ground. Once or twice he had seemed to be infringing on it, +and then she had turned him aside with sweet solemnity and additional +inner excitement. + +These were days indeed! It was Lent, but there were all the minor +pleasures of luncheons and card-parties, and little evening +entertainments held at Mrs. Leverichs hospitable mansion. It mattered +not whether there was anything going on in the town or not; society +focused at her house, with Dosia for the central point. When she thought +of going back again to Lois it was with a blank shiver. + +Lois, indeed, had not been well lately; the children were out of +quarantine, but she had a sore throat, and kept her room under the care +of a trained nurse. Dosia had not seen her, but only Justin, who looked +tired and older. Dosia was not to return now until after Easter and +after the ballMrs. Leverich was going to give a ball for Dosia; it was +to be, in a sense, her coming out. + +She had by this time become quite used to her position as daughter of +the house, accepted luxuries as a matter of course, and even suggested +improvements, when she found that it pleased Mrs. Leverich to have her +do so. She received that ladys embraces gracefully, brought newspapers +unasked for Mr. Leverich, and gave orders to the maids for her hostess. +She had grown accustomed to being waited on, petted, made much of, and +given presents, and blossomed like the rose under this vernal shower of +kindness; her dress, her manner, her very expression, betrayed the ease +of elegance. She did not like to own, even to herself, that long +conversations with Mrs. Leverich were somewhat tiresome when the subject +was neither Lawson nor herself, and she learned to get out of the way of +too many tte--ttes. This did not keep her from having a fervent +gratitude for all the blessings of the situation, and a real love for +the dispenser of them. Now, when the time of her stay was narrowing to a +close, she clung to each day as if it neared the end of life; every +pleasure was doubly dear in that it was the last of its kind. To be +sure, the fairy prince had not arrived as yetBailey Girard, who had +come to the house while she was still a stranger to it, had been half +across the Continent since. It is one of the shabby jests that life is +always playing us, that two who have met once as wayfarers on the same +road, with the memory of that one meeting so curiously vivid and +intimate that it seems as if the fate of the next turning must bring +them within touch again, are yet kept out of sight or sound of each +other for miles by the slight accidents of travel. Fate, when we count +upon her, is apt to be extraordinarily slow in working out her +fulfillments. + +Dosia hailed with delight a proposition made by Mrs. Leverich to get up +a party and drive over one evening to a neighboring town to hear a +lecture given there by a friend. The lecture was nothing, the friend not +a very great attraction, but the expedition in itself gave an excuse for +a drive, and a supper on the return to the Leverich mansion. It was +early April, but the weather was unseasonably warm, and there was a +golden moon. They were to go in a bargethe local name for a long, +low, uncovered wagon, with two lateral seats, holding about thirty +people. Mrs. Leverich had insisted on plenty of lap-robes and extra +wrappings and even umbrellas, in spite of remonstrances. She herself +could not go, but there were plenty of chaperons, little Mrs. Snow +having been pressed into service as a substitute at the last moment, +with every promise of mild evening weather especially beneficial to +rheumatism. + +Some one had a bugle that woke the echoes as the caravan drew up at each +door to gather the different segments of the party. Dosia felt wild with +glee as she bundled into the barge, amid merry shrieks and laughter, and +found herself seated by Mr. William Snow, while Lawson took the place on +the other side of her. Ada and Mr. Sutton were farther down, with Mrs. +Snow near them. Opposite Dosia was a chaperon of the chaperons. + +Dosia hardly knew what she was saying as she laughed and talked with the +crowd, while Lawson conversed across with Mrs. Malcolmson, but the sense +of his nearness never left her. Billy at last got a chance to say to her +in a low, intense voice: + +Why are you always listening for what _he_ says? + +Her glance followed his, and her color rose. + +Dear little Billy is rude; Billy must learn manners, she retorted +gayly, but with a sharpness below the gayety. + +I dont care whether its rude or not. Here Im sitting by you for the +first time this week, and you dont seem to hear a word I say. Ive been +trying to talk to you, and you dont pay the slightest attention. + +Oh, you poor child! said Dosia. Would it like some candy? + +Its no use talking to me like that, returned William stubbornly. I +know youre a year older than I am + +Two, interpolated Dosia. + +Its seventeen months and three daysbut thats nothing to do with it. +Its no use your trying the grandmother actI could marry you, just the +same, if I _am_ younger. Mrs. Stanford is two years older than her +husband, and Mrs. Taylor is five years older than hers. Lots of people +do itbut thats not the point now. Im miles older than you in +everything but years. Ive had experience of the world, and you +havent. His belligerent tone softened, and he looked at her tenderly +as he towered above her, his blue eyes alight. You need somebody to +take care of you. I dont care whether you believe it or not, I know +what Im talking about. I wish youd drop that fellow. + +Why? asked Dosia, with dangerous calm. + +Why? Becauseyou ought to know. He isnt a gentleman; hes no good. He +isnt _fit_. If he was, dont you think hed look out for you, and not +take advantage the way he does? If he had a decent spark in him, hed +never let you be seen with him; he knows it, if you dont. Why, there +have been times Ive seen him when you wouldnt pick him up off the road +with a pair of tongs. + +Mr. Barr, will you fasten this cloak around me? said Dosia, in a clear +voice. + +She turned with her back to William and leaned a little closer to +Lawson, after he had helped her arrange the garment. Lawson had made +every resolution to take no advantage of his position, but he was not +proof against this alluring moment; his warm hand with its long, +tapering fingers sought hers under cover of the lap-robe, and held it +while he still talked with apparent unconcern to his matronly vis--vis. +Once he looked around at Dosia with those teasing eyes full of laughter, +and yet of something more. She could not drag her hand away without +betraying the struggle, as his closed more tightly over it, though her +riotous heart beat so that she feared it must get into her voice, and +there was an odd feeling as if she were doing some one a wrong. Her +fluttering was intoxication to Lawson. + +They drove for five miles with the early spring moonlight shining +silverly through the last rosy haze of the sunset, the air sweet with +the scent of green grass and dewy blossomings. + +Lawson did not look at Dosia as he helped her out of the wagon, nor did +he come in to listen to the lecture, through which she sat pulsating at +the thought of the drive home, desiring yet fearing it. Would he be near +her then? Her question was answered. He helped to put everyone else in +the wagon, and they two came last. This time their opposite neighbors +were a young couple engrossed in each other. Dosias quick eye took in +the situation at once. She was determined not to speak first, and they +rode for a while in silence; then he moved nearer, and asked in a low +tone: + +Why dont you look at me? + +Why did youhold my hand? She spoke in a whisper that he had to bend +his head to hear. + +I might tell you a good many reasonsbut one will do. I am going away +for good. + +What? She turned breathlessly, with a quick pang. The night had grown +very dark, but she could see the gleam of his eyes and the outline of +his olive face as it leaned over her. Why? + +Because He stopped, and his quizzical look changed into something +deeper. I believe I ought to. Ive had a sort of an offer out West, and +its time I made a change. + +Is it to lead a new life? asked Dosia, with deep and tender solemnity. +Mrs. Leverichs words came back to her; this, then, had been all +planned. + +Oh, let us always hope so! said Lawson lightly. Who knows? Perhaps +Ill turn into a highly respectable individual and make money. You cant +be respectable without money, Ive tried it, and I know. I had a sort of +an opening in Central Africa which my dear brother-in-law pressed upon +me, but I decided against it. + +Central Africa! + +Yes. I appreciated Leverichs feelings in the planyou cant get back +easily from Central Africa, if you get back at all. So Im going, for +good or bad, to a nice little mining-camp in Nevada, where you get your +mail every six weeks or so, and where you can go down into your grave +any way you please without scandalizing your friends. Ill be really +quite out of the way. + +Out of the way! Her heart leaped with pride in him. How little William +knew of this man! + +Yes, out of everybodys wayand yours, dear little girl. Im not good +enough for much, but perhaps Im good enough for that. + +Oh, said Dosia, distressed and fascinated by his tone of real feeling. +But whyoh, I shall miss you so muchand think of youso much! Her +voice broke. I cant bear to think of your going off in this wayso +lonely. + +There was a shriek from farther down the barge. Its beginning to rain, +its beginning to rain! A wild scramble ensued for cloaks and +umbrellas. A furious shower was descending almost with the words, and +the whole party slid off the two long seats into the straw on the bottom +of the barge, and cowered under the carriage-robes pulled up around them +for a shelter, showing only a mass of umbrellas above. + +Lawsons quick movements had insured Dosias protection. + +You are not getting wet at all? He bent over her tenderly under the +enveloping umbrella. + +Not at all, she whispered. + +It was as if everything were a confidence now. She reverted to the +subject of their conversation: + +Oh, do you think you will really not come back? + +He laughed. Yes, I mean itnow. Of course, you know thats my chief +faultmy resolutions are too frequently writ on sand. He spoke of his +own weakness with the bitter yet facile contempt which too often +enervates still more instead of strengthening. Yes, I mean it. Do you +wonder I took your hand? Are you sorry Im going? is my little friend +sorry? She mustnt be sorry; you know, nobody is sorryshe must be glad +to get rid of inc. Speakand say it. + +No, whispered Dosia. + +He pressed her arm close to him, as he held her hand and pulled the +wraps around her, shifting the umbrella as the wind changed. One of the +men in front lighted a lantern and held it out in the rain at arms +length, to glimmer ahead in the pitchy darkness and show the road to the +driver, who held the horses at a walk. The wagon lurched and tipped in +mud-holes and unexpected ridges and depressions, running up once on the +edge of a bank, while the couples on the floor of it screamed and +laughed. There were muttered rolls of thunder in the distance. Rain in +the night had always brought back the scene of the disaster to Dosia, +but she only thought now that she could not think. All of her that lived +was living at this moment here. + +Why are you so silent? he murmured headily, after an interval. + +I dont know. + +Is there anything else that you want to tell me? + +I dont know. + +Oh, yes, you do. His voice had grown dangerously tender. What is it? +He waited again, bending nearer. Dont you want me to leave youis +that it? Dont you want me to leave you? + +No, whispered Dosia. + +Then Ill stay! + +His arm slid exultingly around her waist, and his hand pressed her head +down upon his shoulder, while she submitted passively, a thing of +suffocating heart-beats and burning blushes, captive to she knew not +what. You oughtnt to have said that, you know, for now Ill never go. +Ill stay with you. Hushkeep still! He held her firmly as some one +spoke from the front, and he answered in a loud tone: + +Yes, Mrs. Malcolmson, its the right road. Swing the lantern a little +further around, Billy. Yes, thats the old white house; we turn +thereits all right. + +He kept his attitude of attention for a few minutes, looking from under +the cover of his umbrella at the huddled heaps and the umbrellas in +front of him. Then Dosia felt that he was coming back to her. She tried +desperately to rally her forces, to think if this was the man with whom +she wanted to spend her life, her husband for all her days. Alas, she +could not think! Some giant, unknown force had sapped her power of +thought. She weakly took his two hands and tried to push his arm from +around her waist and to raise her head from his shoulder. His arm did +not move; her head sank back again. His lips were on herswhich no man +had ever touched before,and those lips now were Lawsons. + +There was _one_ girl kissed to-night, announced Mrs. Snow, as she took +off her numerous layers of shawls and worsted head-coverings in +household conclave after her return from the Leverichs. + +It was perfectly disgraceful! Is there any hot water on the stove, +Bertha? I want a glassful to drink. I hope you left a piece of stale +bread in the oven for me, I feel a little need of something. Oh, yes, of +course there was a supper, we had lobster Newburg and champagne, but I +didnt take any; a cup of beef-tea or a little cereal would have suited +me much better. Its a mercy if I havent taken my death of cold. It was +Dosia Lindens goings-on that I was speaking of; shes a bold sort of a +piece, evidently, quite different from what I thought. ShWilliams +gone up-stairs, hasnt he? Mrs. Snow dropped her voice mysteriously. +My dear, she and Lawson Barr sat hidden under an umbrella all the way +home, and never spoke a word. You cant tell _me_! Never said a word +that anyone could hear. When she came into the dining-room at the +Leverichs, her face was scarlet, and she couldnt even look at anyone, +though she talked enough for ten while he played some queer thing on the +piano. You can just ask Ada. + +Miss Bertha had preserved an immovable countenance throughout the +monologue, but her eye now sought her sisters and received a swift +glance of confirmation from that silent and discreet damsel. The +confirmation brought a shock to Miss Berthafond of the trivial and +unimportant in gossip, the scandal which hurt the young devolved a hurt +on her, too. As mothers who have lost children feel a tenderness for +those who do not belong to them, so Miss Bertha, who had lost her youth, +felt toward the youth in others. Her mothers small mind yet had an +uncanny power of partial divination, gained from years of experience and +espial, that irritated while it impressed. + +Her face was probably red from the wind and the rain, said Miss +Bertha, in a matter-of-fact tone, regardless of her mothers +contemptuous sniff. What kind of a time did you have, Ada? Did you see +anything of Mr. Sutton? + +Just a little, replied Ada temperately. + +This time it was the mothers and Miss Berthas eyes that telegraphed. +Ada, my dear, you may take my shawls up-stairs. She was with him _all_ +the time. I hope he saw enough of Dosia Lindens bold actions to disgust +him, at any rate. Yes, my dear, everything was managed very beautifully +at the Leverichs, and it was all very elegant; but she is a little +commonMrs. Leverich, I mean. She was really quite put out because we +hadnt driven back faster. There was a Mr. Girard who had come out from +the city, and she wanted Miss Dosia to meet him before he lefthe had +just come back from somewhere in the West. She really made quite a time +about it. And theres a sort of vulgar display about her that I dont +care for; you can see shes Lawsons brother. Oh, well, dont take me up +so, Bertha; you know what I mean, well enough. You have such a sharp way +with you sometimes, like your dear fathers family. +William_Wil-liam_! + +Yes, mother. + +I want you to come down and put the cat out and lock up at once,oh, +you did, did you?and kissed me good night, too, you say? I didnt +notice it. And did you empty the water-pan under the ice-box, and bank +up the fire, and water the big palm? Oh, very well. Then, +WilliamWil-liam! I want you to come down again, now, and take a +rhinitis tablet, after the dampness of to-night. + +There was an emphatic sound from above. + +Hes shut his door, said Miss Bertha. + +Ah, what does a girl think who has given up all her bright anticipations +for a man whom she knows is not worthy? Lawson had pressed Dosias hand +only when he said good night,there were others around,but he had +looked at her lips. She knew how his felt upon them; their touchmore +than all the murmured elusive questions and answershad made her his. + +She knelt down by the big chair in her room, and buried her hot face in +the cushions, to try and think at last, with a suddenly sinking heart +that feared when it should have rejoiced. He had told her that no one +could make him go, now that she loved him; he would stay here. And work +for me? she had asked, and he had answered, Yes, and work for you. +She should be so happy now, so happy! The perspective down which she had +always seen her future was suddenly shortened; this was the end. Lawson +Barr, the man she had been playing with at a delightful, enthralling, +forbidden game, he was the man with whom she had promised to spend her +life, her husband for all her days; that which was to have been her +uplifting was instead something for her to carry. Suppose that she had +more of those awful, clear-sighted moments which had disenchanted her +when his sister spoke? No, no; that must not happen, that must not! +Dosia had acquiesced in what was said about him, with the large-eyed +uncomprehension of the girl who pretends that she understands what +everyone expects her to; it meant somethingshe was afraid to have +anyone tell her what; she pretended to understand, because she was +afraid some one would let her know of half-divined, unmentionable +things. He was notgood; he drankpeople despised him: but he clung to +her, and she had let him kiss her, oh, not only once or twice, but many, +many times. She knew in her heart, she knew, that he was what they said; +but it was to be her work to help him always. When she had been with him +hitherto, there had always been the excitement of feeling that the claim +was temporary, to hold or not, at will, a mere pretense of a claim. Now +it was real. She was bound forever! + +Was the moment of disenchantment upon her now? She did not deceive +herselftoo late she owned the truth. What was the worst? He was +weakthen she must be strong. She thought of herself in years to come. +People said you couldnt reform a man who drankher father had been +very strong on this point. She had thought of it all before, to be sure; +but nownow it came home. She imagined herself keeping his house for +him, getting his mealsperhaps with children; waiting, listening +suspiciously for his returning footsteps; trying to keep him +straight,perhaps not succeeding. Yes, she must succeed! People +looked down on himso they would look down on her. And while her clear +and pure nature reasserted itself, and thought and tried pathetically to +find out truth alone, her cheeks still burned, her senses owned his +sway. Those intoxicating moments forced themselves upon her, whether she +would or no. But the truththe truth below that, the truth was that she +did not love him. You can carry any burden if you have the strong wings +of love, but she had them not. What was to have been the crowning of her +maidenhood had come to thisa sacrifice to the baser, and without love. +Nay, not that, not quite that! The maternal spirit in Dosia rose and +yearned over this outcast, whom nobody loved, with a tenderness which +owned no thought of self; she must never think of herself any more, but +only what was best for him. She was to be his wife. The word brought a +choking feeling, with its thrill of mystery. She was so youngso young! +Could she keep up a sacrifice always? Why had she not been able to think +in this way until now? The answer came clearly in her search for truth: +because she would not let herself do so. She had been warnedshe had +been warned. + +Prayit helps. That was what she had said to him. Ah, yes! She slid +to her knees; her only real help was in Heaven. She must keep her +promise! She must always love him whom nobody loved, and trust him whom +nobody trusted. Perhapsperhaps when he kissed her againShe put the +thought away, so that she, a child, might speak straight to God. And +while she prayed Lawson was coming down-stairs with his hat on. + +You are not going out? His sister barred the way, in a purple velvet +gown, and laid a plump jeweled hand on his sleeve. The lights were +already out in the drawing-room, and, beyond, the servants were removing +the last traces of the supper. + +He did not answer for a moment, looking at her with hard eyes, void of +expression save for a certain tenseness. It was a look she knew. Then he +answered roughly: + +Im going in on the twelve-oclock train with some of the boys. Its no +good to talk. + +Lawson! not now. Her tone was angry. Go up-stairsto bed. + +Well, I guessnot! said Lawson. He swept her hand from his arm, and +was out of the door and running quickly down the steps before she +turned. + +[Illustration: _It was a look she knew_] + +Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart beating with a +rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. She was his, though she had +been warned. + +Warnedyes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world of chaperons and +parents and guardians and people who knew! + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + + +It was the night of Mrs. Leverichs grand ball. Dosia was coming out. + +The preparations had been going on for the entire week since the drive. +The great house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the floors waxed, +the state silver brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half +a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand orders, to +select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement that was made or thought of +required discussionwhat furniture was to be taken up in the attic and +what left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, where +the musicians were to take their stand; how many small tables would be +needed for the serving of the supper that was to come from town. +Leverich himself had said there was to be no expense spared, and he +would see to the wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of +his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there had been a +delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her own name on them, and tried +to realize that this was indeed what Mr. Leverich called her party. He +had insisted, at his wifes suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her +gown for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty thanks for +his kindness. There was something about Mr. Leverich, with all his outer +coarseness, that Dosia liked. When she spoke in a certain way, he never +answered wrong, as his wife sometimes did; he understood. + +Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her lover. After +her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him at the breakfast to +which she came down very late the next morning, she was relieved to hear +that he had suddenly been called away earlier. He might not be back for +a day or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring herself +to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a matter of course by +everyone else. But there had been a note from him, after the two days +were up, postmarked from the citya mere line that said only, For the +girl I love. + +Will your brother be back for the party? she asked Mrs. Leverich, +trying to keep her color steady and ask the question casually. + +Oh, yes, indeed, the sister answered readily. He may be back at any +minute now. Hell be here on the day itself, for certain; he knows I +want his help about some things. + +Without Lawsons actual presence Dosia could fashion him into the man +she loved, and pitch her own key of living higher. With that higher +thought and her simple earnestness of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, +more subtly sympathetic with others; she was no girl any longer, she +said to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his eyes +claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the thought. There was a +strange tingling emotion in everything connected with him. Ah, he would +be worthyhe must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence +supplied him with the halo. + +All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the Leverich house; +it was impossible to overestimate its importance. Every woman was having +a new dress made, or was absorbingly renovating an old one, and every +man was sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody was +asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball was to be outside +the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,she had taken cold on the +ride,but it was to be one of Miss Berthas rare appearances in public; +she was to chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former was to +be one of the receiving party. + +Dosias week had been one surging thought of Lawson, mixed with wild +anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time on the eventful night +he had not arrived. + +Girard is coming, you know, after all, said Leverich, as they +assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. I met him in town +to-day, and was lucky enough to get him. Thats the right man for you, +Dosia. + +For me! Dosia laughed, with her rising color. Mr. Leverich, you are +always trying to find the right man for me. I dont want him! + +You havent met him yet, said Leverich wisely. Hes the only fellow I +know that Id be willing to have you marry. I told him you were waiting +for him. + +Oh, oh, oh! cried Dosia, in consternation. + +Now, dont get excited, said Leverich, smiling broadly. I said hed +have to work to get youthat you werent the kind of a girl that came +when she was beckoned to. Oh, I put your stock way up. + +He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. No, Ill +confess! I didnt say anything of the kind; I was just romancing. I did +tell him hed meet a pretty nice girlyou dont mind that, do you? + +You dont deserve to be answered, said Dosia. She went and hung over +his chair caressingly for a moment before escaping from the room. + +In spite of his recantation, the effect of having been offered to Mr. +Girard remained the real situationone of sudden and great intimacy. +The thought of his coming to-night added to her happiness; it brought +the deep pleasure inseparable from his nameit was as if something both +calm and protecting had been added, like the comfortable presence of one +who understood. He would sympathize, if he knew, with that high motive +of duty which must uphold her, whether the glamour held or failed. He +would know what it was to feel that you must be true. + +As she went through the still unlighted upper hall, she came face to +face with some one in an overcoat, a man who carried a valise. + +Lawson! she whispered. + +For one dreadful moment she saw him in that way she feared; shallow, +insincere, unstablewas that all? Was there something indefinably odd, +indefinably strange? Then she saw only the gaze that recalled +everythinghe loved her! That thrilling thought carried all before it; +her pulses leaped to own him master, with a sudden lovely, trusting joy. + +No, no! she whispered again, with falling eyelids, as he made a +movement toward her. His lips touched her hair. Not here! Some one is +coming. + +Later, then! he murmured assentingly, with a gleaming eye, as she +eluded him and ran down the corridor to her own room. + +This was to be her ball, her ball! Her lover had come. Her dress lay on +the bed, a white and airy thing; her white pearl-beaded slippers were +below it on the floor. Every chair was piled high with dainty whiteness +of some sort. Her dressing-table, with its candles and flowers, was like +a shrine for her beauty. The mirror reflected her with loosened waves of +hair and bare arms and feet, her bath-robe slipping from her shoulders. +It reflected her again, fresh and gleaming, low-bodiced, short-skirted, +and a-tiptoe in her pearly slippers; and again in filmy, trailing +petticoats, and half-covered neck, sitting like a pictured marchioness +of old in front of the dressing-table, in the shine of the candles, +while Mrs. Leverichs maid piled the fair hair high on her small head. +And every few minutes there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought +in a box of flowers, great, delicious bunches of red and pink and white +roses, and sweet peas and lilies, and violets tied with yards of +lustrous satin ribbon. Dosia held out her arms for them, the dear, +fragrant, heavenly things, and hung over them, and buried her face in +them, and kissed them, before she sent them down-stairs, with loving +protest that she should have to be parted from them until she should +follow. She had not so much as dreamed of this richness of flowers for +her! It was because it was her ball, her ball! And her lover had come. + +There was a noise of carriages driving up to the housethe intimate +friends who came first. The musicians below were beginning to tune their +instruments, and the twanging of the strings touched an intenser chord +of exhilaration. The long-ago dance at the bazaarwas Dosia to have +another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? For this was +her ballher ball, and the dance would be with Lawson as her lover. Her +feet kept time to some fairy measure of her own. + +[Illustration: _Like a pictured marchioness of old_] + +Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white cloud +enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in pale green satin, came +into the room and clasped a little thread of pearls around the slender +white throat before she went down-stairs. + +Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but pale and cold; +there was a sick look around her mouth. One or two girls ran in for a +peep at the dbutante. And was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent +up word that they were all waiting for her. In a momentDosia would +come in a moment. If they would leave her, she would be down in a +moment. The music had struck up now, and swung into the preparatory +strains of Lohengrin. Dosia would come in a moment. + +As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone in her +chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. Her spirit cried out +that this instant could never come again; she wished to feel it, to know +it, forever. The mirrors reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, +as she leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... Then she +opened the door and went down the hall to the stairs. + +Dosias beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends on the soul +within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. Never in her life +would she look again as she did to-night, with that lovely, childlike +joy of anticipation; deeper happiness might be hers, but never happiness +of the same kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one +shaded his eyes with his hand. + +The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which led to a broad +landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway of the brilliantly +lighted drawing-room across the hall. In there were grouped Mrs. +Leverich, Lois, the rest of the receiving party, and the Misses Snow, +standing near a table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, +their long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich was +at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside him was George +Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; at one side in the +half-shadow of some palms was another man. Something in the turn of the +shoulders was oddly familiar to Dosiahe moved suddenly, and for a +second she stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was +Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her than it was +followed by another: Where was Lawson? + +Here is our princess descending the stairs, announced Mr. Sutton +gallantly. + +At that instant, as Dosia stood on the landing, with one slippered foot +on the lower step, facing her little admiring world, somebody began to +come down the flight at the side with hurrying, stumbling feet. It was +Lawson in evening dress, his olive cheeks flushed, his eyes reckless. +The men who were watching knew at once that, in common parlance, he was +not himself. Dosia, her sweet eyes raised to meet his, only knew, with +a quick, half-frightened thrill, that he looked strangely unnatural. He +seemed to see no one but her, as he caught up to her, saying jovially: + +You can give me that other kiss now. + +[Illustration: _Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling +feet_] + +Did his hand but touch her white shoulder in that suggestion of vulgar +familiarity that branded her as with a hot iron in its scorching, +blinding shame? She could not blush, the blood had all gone to her +stricken heart and left her white as a snow wreath. Then Leverich sprang +up the steps and took Lawson by the arm, dragging him forcibly back into +the upper regions, as some of the guests began to descend. Dosia must go +in, helpless, toward those staring faces. Would no one come to her aid? +Justin? He had turned to speak to Lois. Billy Snow? His face was +averted, his eyes on the ground. Bailey Girard, her helper once, the +hero of her dreams, the man his friend had pledged for succorBailey +Girard stood motionless. + +It was George Sutton who came forward and, placing her hand in his arm, +led her with old-fashioned courtesy to her place beside Mrs. Leverich. +The whole incident had taken barely a moment. Dosia stood up, pale and +graceful, artificially self-composed, greeting the many people who began +to pour in, smiling above the enormous bouquet of bride roses that she +held, and chatting in a high, thin voice. Her one immediate thought was +that she must stand up straight, as if nothing had happenedstand up +straight and talk. + +Has the girl no feeling? thought Lois contemptuously. Why, she did +not even blush! + +Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling of death in the +heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! What did those men think of +her, or those women who saw? What could they think her like, to have +given any man a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson +done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulderhe had asked her for +a kiss. That was all. It was nothing and it was everythingsomething +that could never be undone. Through the dancing, through the flirting, +through all the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. +What had happened? It was nothingand it was everything. Each effort +for comfort brought with it that horrible, blinding shame to surge over +her more and more, as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch. + +How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly showed the people, +how gay the scene! One partner after another claimed Dosia. She danced +and danced, and did not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all +that throng there was not one person whom she could call her friend. She +fancied that people were whispering as she passed them. She had but one +prayerthat the evening might end. She met Justins eyes from time to +time; they looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered +expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, and she was right. +Those who are responsible are squeamish as to the appearance of delicacy +in the conduct of a young girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, +yet there was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such a +thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed them all in an +awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich briefly, She had better +come back to us at once, and Leverich had answered, Well, perhaps it +would be best. + +William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming into the ball-room +at all. He stood, instead, leaning against a doorway, and watched +everyone who approached Dosia; his brows were lowering, his attitude +aggressive. He saw that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was +not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, bent +solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glass of water, and +William saw that she had lapsed momentarily on a corner divan by his +sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful eyes raised to the elder woman, +but he did not hear the younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice: + +Oh, Miss Bertha, Im so glad to be here with you! + +Thank you, my dear. + +Im homesick, said Dosia, with a white smile. Oh, Miss Bertha, Im so +homesick! Her fancy had leaped passionately to the security of the +untidy cottage in the South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it +were really the loving home she longed for. + +Homesick at a ball! said Miss Bertha, with a kind inflection. She +patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly with her thin +ungloved hand. You oughtnt to be homesick now, you must enjoy +yourself, my dear; youre young. + +Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosias burning eyes. +If she could only have stayed with Miss Bertha! But she was claimed for +the dance. Why must you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never +end? + +The evening was half over when she found herself in front of Mr. Girard, +with some one hastily introducing them. He had just come from up-stairs +with several men, all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he +hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively fancied that +he had kept out of her way on purpose, though she remembered hearing +Leverich say that he did not know how to dance, and so did not care for +balls. Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, his +personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, as something +unaffectedly charming and magnetic. He was tall, straight, and well +made, with the square shoulders she remembered, and the easy, erect +carriage of a soldier. The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his +long, thin face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, all +gave an impression of young vitality and power that accorded well with +her thought of him. His eyes were light gray, and not very large; Dosia +had seen them full of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to +acquire a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had thought +of him so long and intimately that his presence near her brought its +exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. She looked up at him. It might +help even her to be near anyone as strong as that, if he were kindas +kind as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, +unconsciously, as she half extended her hand. + +Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed formally as he said: +Pardon me, but I am just on my way to the train. + +He stepped aside, leaving a free passage for the youth who came pushing +by to claim his dance with her, and was gone almost before she knew it. +He _could_ have stayedhe did not want to talk to her! She was lonely +and disgraced, and the thought of Lawson an agony. + +She did not see that, as Girard went into the hall, some one gripped him +there and said fiercely, Come with me! Billy Snow, his eyes blazing, +had pulled him out on the piazza beyond. + +Youve got to answer to me for that, he stuttered. Youve got to +answer to me for that, Mr. Girard. Why did you turn away from Dofrom +Miss Linden like that? + +What right have you to ask? questioned the other man coolly, but with +a sudden frown. + +None, except that Ilove her, said Billy, with a queer, boyish catch +in his voice. Yes, I love her, and she doesnt care a snap of her +finger for me. But I dont care; I love her anyway, and I always shall. +Im proud to! The catch came again. She may step on me, if she wants +to. You saw what happened here to-night when that damned brute He +made a gesture toward the hallway. + +Girard made no answer, but looked into vacancy for a moment. Before the +sight of both of them came a vision of Dosia in all the radiance of her +beautiful innocence, the flush on her cheek, and the divine, shy look in +her eyes when she first raised them to Lawson, before it changed to + +You saw what happened here to-night, said Billy, with renewed heat at +the others silence. I dont care what _he_ said, or what you think; +shes no more to blame than + +The other stopped him with a quick, peremptory gesture. + +You mistake, he said shortly. Youre speaking to the wrong person. I +saw nothing. I dont know what you mean, and I dont want to. + +What! cried William, staring. + +Let me give you a piece of advice, said Girard incisively, with an odd +whiteness in his face. Dont you know better than to bring the name of +a woman into a discussion like this? If a girl needs no defenseby +Heaven, she needs none! And thats the end of it. Only a fool talks. + +Yes, said William, with a sharp breath, after a pause,yes; thank +youIll remember. But when I meet _him_ He stopped significantly. + +Oh, whatever you please! said Girard, spreading out his hands lightly, +with a smile and a quick, steely gleam in his eyes that cut like a +scimitar. + +Sorry Ive got to gomy overcoat is just inside. No, I dont want to +drive, Id rather walk. Good-by! + +He went off in a moment, with long strides, down the carriage-drive to +the station, the dance-music growing fainter in the distance. She was +dancing still. Her faceher pure, sweet, pleading childs facewent +with him through the moonlight. He knew that look! When helpless things +were hurt like thatHe couldnt talk to her that night, nor touch her +hand, because of that burning desire to leap on Lawson Barr and choke +the life out of him first. + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + + +The morrow after the ball was drawing to a close in darkening clouds and +an eerie, rushing wind. It had been one of the gray, cold days of +spring, with a leaden sky and a pervading damp and chilla long, long +day to some of those in the Leverich house. Rumor whispered that Lawson +had been found upon the highroad in the early morning, unconscious, with +his face and head cut, and that there were tracks yet on the side piazza +from the feet of those who had carried him in from the muddy roads. +Rumor said that the wounds had not come from accident. The doctors +carriage had been there, and had gone again; but the doctor might have +come to see Miss Linden, who was also said to be prostrated and in bed, +or Mrs. Leverich, who was excused to callers as having a headache. The +great house was silent and deserted-looking inside, except for the +servants engaged in setting it to rights and carrying the furniture down +from the attic, where it had been stored overnight. + +Only a few even of the inmatesof whom Dosia was oneknew that Lawson +was in an upper room, with his head bandaged, sobered and sullen, +watching through the wide windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as +he waited the completion of the arrangements that were to take him at +nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had put his foot +down this time; Lawson was to go. He was bringing his vices too near +home, concealment was no longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past +rose to make a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected +Dosias. + +Its no use, Leverich had said to his wife, in a stormy interview that +morning, I wont have the fellow here another day. Ill ship him off to +Nevada, and not another penny will I give him while he lives. He can +sink or swim, for all me; and he _will_ sinkdown to hell. + +Oh, dont say that you wont send the poor boy any money, pleaded his +wife. + +Not a red. Ive had enough of him, Myra. _You_ know! As long as he +could appear half-way decent, I was willing to carry my end, but hes +going to the dogs now too fast for me. Ive done with him; he goes +to-night, whether hes able to or not. + +Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. Mrs. Leverich, +impelled by what sometimes seems to be the very demon of hospitality, +still pressed her to stay longer, while knowing that her absence would +be a relief. + +It is too bad that you want to go like this, she had said crossly, +sitting in gorgeous neglige by the side of Dosias bed, her handsome, +richly colored face showing mean lines in it. I looked upon you quite +as a daughter; I thought we would have such nice times together. Why on +earth couldnt you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? Then none of this +would have happened. Her tone was complaining, as of one compelled to +suffer unnecessarily; there was such a total absence of warmth as to +prove that shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated +unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her an injured feeling; +if there had been a glamour around Dosia the glamour had departed. What +little depth the nature of Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of +blood, which made her resent any imputation on Lawson. + +I suppose youd like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have your meals in +your room, she went on in a businesslike way. Ill send Martha up to +pack your trunk for youthat is, if you insist on goingif shes not +too busy. The servants have so much to do to-day. + +Oh, I can pack it myself, said Dosia. What did one stab the more +matter now? She took Mrs. Leverichs hand impulsively. Youve been so +good, so kind to meyouve given me so many pretty things,her voice +sank to a whisper,it doesnt seem to me that I ought to keep them +now. I want to give them back to you. + +What is it you say? asked Mrs. Leverich impatiently. You speak so +low, I can hardly hear you. Oh, these! She turned to a little pile of +jewel-cases on the table. Why, I gave them to you to keep. Well, if you +feel that way about itThese pearls, perhaps, but the pins were quite +inexpensive; do keep them, really, theres no reason why you shouldnt, +you know. + +Id rather not, said Dosia; and her hostess gathered the things when +she went out. + +It was a long daya long, long day. From the bed where Dosia lay, she +saw the gray clouds shifting, shifting endlessly above through the +opening made by the parted window-curtains. What had happened? +Nothingand everything; nothingand everything! + +Gossip reigned in the village, carrying Dosia and Lawson up and down its +gamut, even reaching the high crescendo of a secret marriage, with the +inevitably hinted smirching reasons therefor. The Leverich ball promised +to supply subject-matter for many a day to come. Mrs. Snow, from as +early as eleven oclock in the morning, sat with a white worsted shawl +wrapped around herthe sign of elegant leisureand rocked in the +green-bowered and steaming little sitting-room between the geraniums and +the begonias while awaiting visitors. She greeted each one who ran in +with the invariable remark: + +I suppose you know all about the Leverichs ball last night. Well, what +do you think of the goings-on there? being intent mousingly on getting +every last little cheesy crumb of detail, and peacefully unaware of +deep, rich stores concealed in her own family. The incident of the +stairway was common property, but Miss Bertha had told nothing of +Dosias little heart-breaking confidence to her. Her mother was amazed +at the very conservative disapproval expressed by this elder daughter, +turning for confirmation of her own views to her callers. + +I thought, before all this, that the girl was a bold thing, she +announced in virtuous condemnation. Its all very well for you to try +and defend her, Bertha, but neither you nor Ada would have gone on in +that way.Oh, yes, Mrs. Willetts, my dear, he kissed her on the +stairsjust as they all say. But that was the least part of it. They +say his _manner_ to herAnd he wasyes, exactly. Oh, a man doesnt +take liberties, in _such_ a way, unless a girl has allowed a good deal. +Its evident that theyvebeenpret-tyintimate. Im sorry for the +Alexanders, theyll have a handful in her. Bertha, will you knock on the +window? The man with the eggs is passing by, and we want three. +_Bertha!_ you are not paying any attention to me. She is not herself at +all to-day, Mrs. Willetts, she looks so yellow. Yes, you do, Bertha. +Dont you think shes very yellow, Mrs. Willetts? + +Perhaps it is the light, suggested Mrs. Willetts evasively. + +No, its not the light; its the late hours, said Mrs. Snow. I did +not want her to go to the ball, late hours knock her up for days. +William shows the effect of it, toohis right hand is all swelled up. +He says he doesnt know how it got so, but I think its from dancing too +much. + +Mother! expostulated Miss Bertha. + +Well, my dear, I dont see why you speak to me like that. Im not in my +second childhood yet! I dont know why he couldnt get a swelled hand +from dancing; some of these young girls are so athletic, they grip your +fingers like a viseI know _I_ find it very unpleasant. Dont you +rememberno, of course you dont, but I dohow poor General Grants +hand was puffed out to twice its size from people shaking it? The +picture of it was in all the papers at the time. + +I dont think William danced much, said Ada. + +Mrs. Snow pursed her pale lips and shook her small, neat head. + +All I know is that he was quite worn out; he slept so heavily that he +never heard me at all when I rattled at his door-knob and called to him +at three oclock this morning that I thought I heard some one on the +porch below his window. Its very oddIve heard it before. I dont +think its cats, and Im so afraid of tramps. + +The statuesque Ada looked up with a swiftly startled expression. + +There are always tramps around, said Mrs. Willetts. + +Yes, I know it, and it worries me to have William out so late alone. +William is nothing but a child, though he is so tall, said Mrs. Snow. +Of course, last night his sisters were with him. She paused before +harking back to the appetizing theme. They say Miss Linden is still +staying at the Leverichs. I shouldnt think shed stay there an hour +longer than she could help. They say Mrs. Alexander refused to have her +back again at firstdid you hear that? They say + +And in Dosias room, where she lay alone, the long, silent day wore on; +the gray clouds shifted, shifted above. What had happened? Nothingand +everything. + +If Leverich was to keep his word about Lawson, the preparations for his +departure must be speedy. They also took money. Leverich could contract +for any amount of expenditure to be paid in the future by large drafts, +but to hand over five hundred on the minute in cash was at certain times +and hours an irritatingly difficult procedure. He cursed the necessity +now, with a fervor born of the disastrous ball, and the late hours, and +the further fact that stocks had gone down suddenly and he was out on a +deal. The gray clouds meant also, in the city, clouds of dust, which the +raw wind swept smartingly into his eyes every time he had occasion to go +out. As he was getting ready at last to go home with the purchased +tickets, he looked up and saw Justin coming in. Leverich nodded to the +others greeting, but did not otherwise return it. + +I wont ask you to sit down, he said curtly; I want to catch the +four-oclock train out. How are you getting on? All right? + +All wrong. + +Whats the matter? + +This, said Justin, with a white light in his eyes, and holding out a +letter which the other took half reluctantly, relapsing mechanically +into the chair by his desk, while Justin dropped straddle-legged into +another opposite, his face looking over the back of it, around which his +arms were clasped. He went on talking, while the other slowly unfolded +the paper and looked at the heading. + +You remember those first big consignments we sent out after the fire? +Well, the whole output was rotten! + +Great heavens! said the other, sitting up straight, with his eyes +stuck to the lines. Are you sure its as this says? + +Sure? Its the sixth letter of the kind weve had in ten days; three +came in this mornings mail. The packing-room is full now of returned +machineswhat well do with the rest I dont know. A couple of firms +want the instruments duplicated; the rest want their money back. We +talked big at first, thought it was a mistakethats why I didnt speak +of it to youbut its no mistake; the whole outputs rotten. The bars +are rusted and bent, so that everythings out of gear; it would cost +more to repair the machines than to make new ones. + +Were the bars those you got from Cater? asked Leverich. + +Yes. + +Leverich whistled. + +Its no fault of his, those he used were all right. + +Bullen says they must have been a fraction off size for us, and that did +the business. Heaven only knows how many more letters well get! I dont +see how were to pay up and get out of it, as it is. + +Yes, said Leverich, throwing the letter down on the desk, drumming on +it with the ends of his fingers. Then he shrugged his big shoulders as +if shunting the burden from them as he rose. Well, I must go. Sorry I +cant help you out, but Martins away now. By the way, when you can pay +up on that interest, well be glad to have it. Weve been going pretty +easy with you, you know, but it cant last forever; weve got to have +our money, as well as other people. He had not meant to say anything of +the kind, but the bad news and the inferred appeal had accented the +irritation of the day. + +Oh, certainly, said Justin, with a swift gleam in his blue eyes, and a +pride that could be large enough to make contemptuous allowance for a +little meanness in the man from whom he had received benefits. He had +counted on Leverichs ready help in this trouble, but there was more +between the two men than the moneyfrom the first moment of meeting +this afternoon, Dosias name, unspoken, had correlated in each a little +hidden spring of antagonism. One of Justins womenkind had misused +Leverichs hospitality; both resented the fact and her enforced +departure. How many business situations have been made or marred by +domestic happenings, no history of finance will ever tell. + +And still the long day wore on in Dosias silent room. + +The preparations for Lawsons going were all made before the nightfall +that was to cover his exit. His trunk had gone; his coat and hat and +hand-luggage were stacked conveniently together on a chair in the empty, +cleared-out room. + +And this is the last money youll ever get from me, Leverich said, +counting out the bills on the table by which Lawson sat uneasily, his +head and part of his swollen, discolored face bandaged, his dark eyes +glancing furtively from under their heavy lids. There are your tickets, +theyll carry you through. Peters will be at the door with the carriage +at nine to take you to the train here, and James will go over with you +to the terminal and put you on the sleeper. You cant get out too fast +for me. + +Its kind of you to kick a fellow when hes down, said Lawson +sardonically. + +Its a pretty expensive kick, returned Leverich grimly, but its the +last. Youll never get a cent more from me, nor from Myra either, if I +know it. + +Oh, very well, said Lawson indifferently. But when his sister came in +afterwards alone, he cut her words short; through all her plaintive +farewell complainings there was a manifestly cheerful prevision of +relief when he should be gone. + +Ive had enough of thisdont come in here again. He says youre to +send me no money, but youre to send me all I wantyou hear? + +Oh, Lawson! + +You know why youd better. He fixed his eye on her threateningly, and +the full color blanched suddenly from her face. + +Yes, yes, I will. She made an effort to recover herself. If you +realized how used up I am over all this + +Dont come in here again! His rising voice, the glance he shot at her, +sent her flying from the roomit was as if some crouching animal were +about to leap a barrier between them. + +The shifting gray clouds were darkening now into a solid mass, the eerie +wind that had sprung up whined fitfully around the corners of the house, +as he sat there waiting. After a while the door opened and shut; there +was a soft, rustling noise. Lawson looked up, and saw Dosia against that +background of the darkening sky. She was in a white silken gown, given +her by Mrs. Leverich, that fell in straight folds from her waist to her +feet. She had been in white the night of the ball. But her face! He put +his hand involuntarily across his eyes. So pinched, so wan, so small, so +piteously changed that face, he did well to hide the sight of it from +him. Only her eyesthose eyes that were the mirrors of Dosias +soulshowed that she still lived; in them was a steadfastness and a +purpose won from death. + +She came straight toward him, though with a slow and languid step, +dragging a low chair forward to a place by his. His rough appearance, so +different from his usual carelessly well-cared-for aspect, sent a +momentary spasm over her pinched face, but that was all. She dropped +into the chair as one who found it difficult to stand, saying after a +moments silence, in a childlike voice: + +Please take your hand down from your eyes; please dont mind looking at +me. + +He dropped the hand heavily on the table, with some inarticulate +protest. + +Please dont mind looking at me. I want to sayI came here to sayit +is all wrong to act as if everything were all your fault, as if you were +all to blame. Ive been thinking, thinking, thinking, all day long. If I +had done what was right, none of this would have happened. It was my +fault too. + +No! said Lawson roughly. + +Yes. She stopped, and repeated solemnly: It was my fault too. They +are sending you away now becausebecause you had been making love to +me. But I let youher locked fingers twisted and untwisted as she +talkedI _wanted_ you to, when I knew it was wrong, when I didnt +really love you. That was why you couldnt respect me. If I had been +quite high and good, you would not havenone of this would have +happened. + +Oh! said Lawson; the old bitter, mocking smile flickered back to his +lips. Really, dont you think youre setting too much value even on +_your_ influence? I assure you, you can have quite a clear conscience in +that regard. + +She went on, with no attention to what he had been saying beyond the +fact that her pale cheek seemed to whiten and her gaze was fixed the +more solemnly on his. + +I couldnt be satisfied until I had thought out the truth. There is +nothing that satisfies but the truth. Her voice sank to a whisper. If +it cuts your heart in two, youve got to bear itand be gladbecause +its the truth. I know now that, after all, I didnt help you; I +_hindered_. Thats all the more reason for me to stand by you now. And I +came to say,she took his hand and laid her cold cheek upon it,if +you go awaytake me with you! I have enough money to go too. If you +have to work, Ill work; if you are hungry, Ill be hungry. There is no +one to love you but me, and I _will_. I said I would believe in you, and +I will believe in youas I promisedalways. + +My God! said Lawson. He tore his hand from her, and flung his head +upon his folded arms on the table, breaking into great, voiceless sobs +that shook him from head to foot. Half-inarticulate words fell from him: +Dont touch medont come near me! At last he turned, and, gathering +up a fold of her gown, kissed it again and again. His passion raised a +faint stir of the old thrill that came from she knew not where, except +that his presence inevitably called it forth. + +For this once you may believe in me, he said. Look at me! His gaze, +burning with an inner scorn, rested on hers. You are the dearest, the +loveliest His voice broke once more, he had to wait before he could +regain it. If I were to let you sink your life with mine, Id deserve +to be hung. Ive let you talk as if you could help me. Well, you cant, +and Ill tell you whyIll clear your conscience of me forever. Down at +the bottom of it all, I dont want to be helped. I dont want to be made +better. I dont want to live a different life! There are moments when +Ive deceived myself as well as you, but it was all rot. Its not that +Im not fit for you,no mans that!but Im made so that Id rather go +to the devil than _be_ fit for you. The more you cared for me, the more +Id drag you down. Thats the whole brutal truth. The one saving grace I +own is that I tell it to you now. + +Ah, no, no! said Dosia, with a cry. It cant be so. She turned her +head from side to side, as one looking for succor; her composure was +failing her, after so many cruel knife-thrusts in her already bleeding +heartshe yearned over him with a compassion and longing too great to +bear. + +Dosia, said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice sounded far away in +her ears. + +Yes, she answered, rising also, she knew not why. + +This is good-by. + +She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed to lose the marks +of dissipation and bitterness, and become strangely boyish, strangely +sweet, in its expression. + +See! he said, I could clasp my arms around you, as Im longing to, +and kiss your darling mouth. Youd let me, wouldnt you, blessed one? +For all that Ive done or all that Ive been, youd let me? + +Yes, whispered Dosia, trembling. + +Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, that I did +notthat I was man enough to keep you free of me at the last. Ill +never touch you againno, not so much as the hem of your gown. And, so +help me God, Ill never look upon your face again. + +Lawson, Lawson! + +Ill never see your face again. When you think of me, believe and pray +that Ill keep my word. I want to have the thought of you to die with. + +I cant bear it! wailed Dosia suddenly. + +Good-by. + +She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, and his +gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking at each other; the room +faded away from before them in those moments that were of eternity. The +pastthe presentthe future crept up now and stood between them, +pushing them farther and farther away from each other, farther and +farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and +grown dim. They were neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, +and beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting. + +Through the high window the darkening sky had become suddenly luminous +where it touched the horizon. + +Slowly she moved away from himslowly, slowly. One last lingering, +solemn look, and the door had closed. + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + + +Lois, would you mind very much if we didnt move into the new house, +after all? + +Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be +finished next week. + +It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this +year, said Justin. + +Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the purple +wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after Dosias +return. At the side of the steps a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the +place fragrant; the air was full of a sort of glitter that touched the +leaves whenever they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made +the grass brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the voices of the +children sounded peacefully over their early supper. + +The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no +foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George +Sutton, and the people who might drop in, as they often did on +Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, +had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while waiting +for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but now that he was +here she put down her book with a show of reluctance as she said: + +Why didnt you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades +yesterday when I was in townthat was what I wanted to talk to you +about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks +beforehand at this season of the year. + +You can countermand it, cant you? + +I suppose Ill have toif were not to move into the house, said Lois +in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as usual, to +her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled. I thought +you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the money _all_ +have to go back into the business, she quoted sardonically, as +usual? I think there might be some left for your own family sometimes. +Im tired of always going without for the business. It was a complaint +she had made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment +she felt as if she were saying it for the first time. + +We have orders, Im glad to say, but weve had one big setback lately, +he answered. + +He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her sidethe very +effort for success was meat and drink to him, he cared not what else he +went without, so the business grew; but she _might_ have had a little +more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the grand +climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife +sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right. + +Ive been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I havent talked +about it, he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The +blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope +with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about itthe +whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not +diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see +his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the unreasoning +sympathy of love. + +I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I +shouldnt have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple of +houses for next year that youll like much better, he says. + +Oh, it will be just the same next year; therell always be something, +said Lois indifferently, getting up to go into the house. I hate the +whole thing! + +He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have +counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that he +could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If his +own wife could be like that, she might be. + +Papa dear, I love you so much! + +He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and +blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes, +her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent +over. + +Zaidee, my little Zaidee, he said, and, lifting her on his knee, +strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection +that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart +perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, +and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and securehis little +darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his child, +he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it was, +could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the heart-hunger of +his wife. + +She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the +house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the +atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and +unsmiling, accepting Justins occasional caresses as if they made little +difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, +passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; it +contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still +occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and +everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall must +be adjusted to her earthat ear that had strained and ached for his +coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in which +he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him until he +kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at being so +glad to go. + +The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had +feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all +his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had borrowed +a large sum from Lewistons,a young private banking firm, glad at the +moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of months,holding +on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new demand for the +machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Caters, with whom there was +still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed +at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverichs dictum regarding +Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, +outlying competitors: Youll have to force that fellow out of business +or get him to come into the combine. + +Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price +demanded for the continuance of a backing; there was just a little of +the high-handed quality in his manner which says, No more nonsense, if +you please. That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs that +were ready, if he showed symptoms of falling down, to shake him +ratlike by the neck and cast him out. + +Papa dear, papa dear! Theres a man coming up the walk, my papa dear. + +Why, so there is, said Justin, rising and setting the child down +gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois +simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. Why, how are you, +Larue? Im mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home? + +The steamer got in day before yesterday, said the newcomer, shaking +hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark, pointed +beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice +that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered over Lois. +How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? Which chair shall I push +out of the sun for youthis one? + +Yes, thank you, responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of +lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green +vines. Arent you going to sit down yourself? + +Thank you, Ive only a minute, said the visitor, leaning against one +of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. Im out at my place at +Collingswood for the summer, and the trains dont connect very well on +Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I +wouldnt pass you by. + +Did you have a pleasant trip? asked Lois. + +Very pleasant, rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. Oh, by the +way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office +last week. Anything I can do for you? + +Have you any money lying around just now that you dont know what to do +with? asked Justin significantly. + +Mr. Larues dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the +mention of money brings into social relations. + +Perhaps, he admitted. + +May I come around to-morrow at three oclock and talk to you? + +Yes, do, said the other, preparing to move on. Please dont get up, +Mrs. Alexander; you dont look as well as Id like to see you. + +Oh, Im all right, said Lois. + +You must try and get strong this summer, said Mr. Larue, his eyes +dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he +turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee +dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue turned +once more and lifted his hat to her. + +A faint, lovely color had come into Lois cheek, brought there by the +powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larues presence; she +felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had hardly +talked alone for a couple of hours altogether in their whole five years +acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest +occasion, as he had to-day; he knew when she entered a room or left it, +and she knew that he knew. + +It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which +exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of +either. He knew as soon as his eyes fell on her whether she were glad or +sorry, lonely or confident, and his glance or the tone of his voice was +a response to her mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or +too cold, or needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such +intuitions; he had to be told clumsily, and even then might not +understand. Yet she had not loved him the less because she must beat +down such little barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more +for ithe was the man to whom she belonged heart and soulbut the +barriers were a fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do +nothing that Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she +misunderstood her involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he +reverenced her as his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He +would have given all he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin +took as a matter of course. + +Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than half +of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived abroad for +the further study of music, an art to which she was passionately +devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of scandal into +the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away; there was +nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden, under the +undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant publicity +of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She sometimes played the +accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went over every spring, +presumably to be with her, living alone for the greater part of the year +at his large place at Collingswood. Neither was ever known to speak of +the other without the greatest respect, and questions as to when either +had been heard from were usual and in order; it was always tacitly +taken for granted that Mrs. Larues expatriation was but temporary. + +But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had +suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the +tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to +that sting of the known comment of other men: It must be pretty tough +to have your wife go back on you like that. In some mysterious way his +wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished on +her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married him, +it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had proudly let +her go. + +Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch +steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said: + +There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosias hurrying down the road. I +think Id better take the chairs in now. + + + + +CHAPTER SIXTEEN + + +Dosia had come back from the Leverichs to a household in which her +presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. +She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, and spent her +evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for +sleep, of which she could not seem to have enoughsleep, where all +ones sensibilities were dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She +had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before, +owing to their mothers preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a +drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich +domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest. +Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of +allas if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting +for the next thing to happen. + +Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held +back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She +couldnt understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get +into an equivocal position with such a manreally not a gentleman, as +she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that +you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was +condemning. + +The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously +questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich +bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor +was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was +absorbed. + +Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory +counting on the sympathy that had helped her before, but she had been +unfortunate in the times for her visits; on the first occasion Mrs. +Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the +second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird +pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable +house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to +put out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing +when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every +minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, People +ought to know when to come and when not to. Dosia got no farther than +the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her +a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she +was not asked to sit down. + +Your trouble wasnt anybody elses trouble, no matter how kind people +were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her devoted +cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and giving her a +curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. It +would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could have hurt her very +much. But Dosia was in the half-numb condition which may result from +some great blow or the fall from a great height, save for those moments +when she was anguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest +dagger-thrusts, at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, as when +one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful dead which one must, +for all time, be terribly powerless to alleviate. + +Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her +great bunches of roses that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly akin +when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every week, +though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was +changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest and +solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other claims Mr. +Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of profit for +himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He required little +entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected faculty for +narrative conversation. + +Foolish and inane in amatory attentions to young ladies, George was no +fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of current +facts, and could talk about the newsboys clubs, or the condition of the +docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical reasons +why motives for reform didnt reform; and the talk was usually +semi-interesting, and sometimes morehe had the personal intimacy with +his topics which gives them life. Dosia began to find him, if not +exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed. She began genuinely to +like him; he took her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always +thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments when +his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration or a warmer feeling, +but was, instead, somewhat gratefully touched by it. Not only her +starved vanity but her starved self-respect cried out for food, and he +alone gave it to her. + +This Sunday afternoon Dosiamodish and natty in her short walking-skirt +and little jacket of shepherds check, and a clumpy, black-velveted, +pink-rosed straw hatwalked companionably beside the square-set figure +of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had +preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a strong breeze, +although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside trees and grasses +had inspired him with the recollection of a country boys calendara +pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his +theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or to hold her +little checked umbrella so that the sun should not shine in her eyes, or +to offer her his hand with old-fashioned gallantry if there was any hint +of an obstacle to surmount. The way was long, yet not too long. They +stopped, however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while +leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side of the slope +below the carriage drive, looking down into the green meadows below; +beyond, afar off, there was the white mist-hazed glimpse of a river with +toy houses crowded thickly into the middle distance. + +As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia +with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Suttons voice suddenly +broke the silence: + +I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday. + +Dosias heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that +anybody had spoken his name since he left. She had prayed for him every +nighthow she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any other reach +than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in itfear of +any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting tone of the person +who told it, which she would be powerless to resent; fear of awakening +in herself the echo of that struggle of the past. + +Hes at the mines, isnt he? she questioned, in that tone which she +had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him. + +Yes; but I dont believe hes working there yet. He seems to be mostly +engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds like him, +doesnt it? + +Yes, assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance. + +I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there, pursued Mr. Sutton. +Its the worst kind of a life for him. Hes an awfully clever fellow; +he could do anything, if he wanted to. I dont know any man I admire +more, in certain ways, than I do Barr. + +Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawsons clever brilliancy, his +social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself +had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond. +Ive known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he +came to this place, he continued. + +Oh, did you? cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some +words of Mrs. Leverichs returned to herMr. Sutton brought Lawson +home last night. So that was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she +went on: It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr. Barr. +Everybody here seems to look down onto despise him. + +Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick, said George, with an unexpected +crude energy; his good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous +expression. Men talking about him who themselves He looked down +sidewise at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more +respectable than he,respectability might be said to be his cult,yet +he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein +ladies were a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of +confidence by the fact of George Suttons presence. His feeling for Barr +and toleration of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that +George himself had also been brought up in one of those small, dull +country towns in which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing +houses have no home in them for a boy and his friends. + +If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all +right, he asserted shortly. Perhaps wed better be going home; it +looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of +difference in this world, Miss Dosia. + +I suppose it does; Ive never had it, said Dosia simply. + +Maybe youll have it some day, returned Mr. Sutton significantly. His +pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road +together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawsons name had +created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm +throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; _he_ prized +her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show it. He +went on now with genuine emotion: I know one thing; ifif I had a +wife, shed never have to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss +Dosia. + +She ought to care a good deal for you, then, suggested Dosia, picking +her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little black ties +finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Suttons hand ever on +the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow. + +No, I wouldnt ask that; Id only ask her to let me care for _her_. I +think most men expect too much from their wives, said George. I dont +think theyve got the right to ask it. And I dont think a man has any +right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to havethats +my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did +me the honor of accepting my hand,Mr. Suttons voice faltered with +honest emotion,Id spend my life trying to make her happy, I would +indeed, Miss Dosia. Id take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my +means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her. + +I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known, said Dosia, +with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off, +outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book. +Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she +had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first, +and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted +with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true +and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his +uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of lovein short, +John, the honest, patient, constant John of fiction. His affection +for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim +her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him, +which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really JohnDosia +half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman. + +The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile +overspread her face. + +Heres the very lady for you now, she remarked flippantly, as Ada +Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark +cloud in the background, on her way to a friends house from service at +the little mission chapel on the hill. Adas cheeks took on a not +unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Suttons +glance,a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,before she went +down the side-road. + +Mr. Suttons face reddened also. Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be very +charming, but I wouldnt marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl left +in the world. I give you my word I wouldnt. _You_ ought to know + +Well have to hurry, or well be caught in the rain, interrupted +Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an +affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the house +and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and +Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached the +piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois greeted +Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded the +accustomed dead level. + +Do come in, youll be caught in the rain if you go on. Cant you stay +to a Sunday nights tea with us? + +Oh, do, urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze. +Lois hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance +lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She +felt a new tie with Mr. Suttonthey both sympathized with Lawson, +believed in him! + +She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little +round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverichs, which +somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look like a +cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of +the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red +lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort as she +cuddled within Dosias half-bare round white arm, while Mr. Sutton, +drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody +else, his round face getting brick-red at times with suppressed emotion, +though he tried to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory +conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin +alternately played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in the +intervals of discourse. + +Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to +darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming storm; +the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down again; the +trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and +white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently from where Dosia +sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side of the streeta +tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy, erect carriage of a +soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite the house, looked over +at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to stop +the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he crossed over with +a quick, decided step. + +Why, heres Girard! cried Justin, rising with alacrity. His voice came +back from the hall. Awfully glad you took us on your way. Leverich told +you where I lived? Youll have to stay now until the storm is over. +Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia + +I have already met Mr. Girard, said Dosia, turning very white, but +speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the +half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he +bowed with politely murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half +across the room, he seated himself by Justin. + +A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt +before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a +sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met +hersresentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and +lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head +high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitchedthough he turned +from her a moment to say: + +Werent you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard? + +Yes; I thought you didnt see me, said the other lightly, himself +turning to respond to a question of Justins, which left the other group +out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed himself +with ardor. + +[Illustration: _Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else_] + +There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through +large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there talking +to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin +leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no +one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging personality, +seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, by the side of +Girard. + +Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the +dining-room,with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following +after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him +away,came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if +he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As +a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he +much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in +womens society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of +shyness, of deficiencyperhaps partly caused by the conscious +disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born, but +it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to be credited, +and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like many +very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of attractiveness +himself. + +It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation, +with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light +over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and the +water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond +was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the round +mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled +lilies-of-the-valley in the center. + +The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an +odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this +commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed +to be only a veil for the things of the spiritsubtle +cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions +tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one +knew not what. To Dosias swift observation, Girard had lost some of the +brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the ball; he +looked as if he had been under some harassing strain. Her first +impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was reinforced +now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then, +had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, the +hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the shrine of her +memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger. Had he known? He +must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the +most! She could not hear what he said though the room was small; he and +Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was evident that he frankly +admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became +curiously aware that from his position directly across the room he was +covertly watching her as she sat consentingly listening to George +Sutton, whose round face was bending over very near, his thick coat +sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles of hers as it rested on the carved +arm of the little sofa. + +She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its big +blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the simple +rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held. + +Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosias bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved +a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant +moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of +vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her +imaginingshe felt the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those +two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously +so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to +Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was, indeed, in that +stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any concealment, and for +which other men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even while +she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish manifestation of +something inherently great, and a tribute to her power. To Dosias +indifference, in this strange dual sense of another and resented +excitement,an excitement like that produced on the brain by some +intolerably high altitude,Mr. Suttons attentions seemed to breathe +only of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very kind. +She could ask him to do anything for her, and he would do it, no matter +what it was, just because she asked him. He was planning now a day on +somebodys yacht, with Lois, of course; and What do you say, Miss +Dosiacant we make it a family party, and take the children too? he +asked, with eager divination of what would please this lovely thing. + +Yes, oh, why cant you take _us_? cried Zaidee, trembling with +delight. + +The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole place +was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosias voice was +heard saying: + +Ill get my photograph now, if you want it. She rose and left the +room,she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,and Zaidee ran +over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain +against Dosia rosy warm. + +You had better light the lamp, Justin, said Lois, and then, Oh, +youre not going? as Girard stood up. + +He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. Im afraid Ill have to. + +I expected you to stay to tea; Ive had a place set for you. + +Id like to very muchits kind of you to ask mebut Im afraid not +to-night. Ill see you to-morrow, Sutton, I suppose. Good evening, Mrs. +Alexander. His hand-touch seemed to give an intimacy to the words. + +Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere, said Justin, +investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who had followed the +two, stood in the doorway. + +I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by? asked Girard +tentatively. + +Will you, Zaidee? asked her father, in his turn. + +For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. Girard dropped +on one knee, a very gallant figure of a gentleman, as he put both arms +around the small, light form of the child and held her tightly to him +for one brief instant while his lips pressed that warm cheek. When he +strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in farewell, it was with +an odd, somber effect of having said good-by to a great deal. + +For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had been the +recipient of an emotion called forth by some one else. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVENTEEN + + +Lois? + +Yes? + +Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary +overhead singing with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her look +gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was busy, as +ever, withno matter what she was doingthe self-fullness of her +thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to move +into the other house, where, amid new surroundings, she could escape +from the familiar walls and outlook that each brought its suggestion of +pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how she wanted to +be happy. + +Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said: + +Ive something to tell you, Lois. + +Well? + +Im engaged to George Sutton. + +Dosia! + +Lois work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl. + +Im sure I dont see that you need be surprised, said Dosia. She +looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either +sympathy or interest. + +No, I suppose not, said Lois. Of course, I know he has been paying +you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls almost +as much. She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a sense, she had +rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve many +difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosiaif Dosia could! +Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without loving him would +have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a physical +impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or support was +outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with cold +disapproval: + +Dosia, you dont know what you are doing. You dont love George +Sutton. + +Dosias face took on the well-known obstinate expression. + +He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is +satisfied, I dont see why anyone else need object! He likes me just as +I am, whether I care for him or not. + +She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that +unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly +subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though +her voice was tremulous. And I _do_ care for him. I like him better +than anyone I know; we are sympathetic on a great many points. No +one_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesnt want anything but +to make me happy. + +Lois made a gesture of despair. Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George +Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is +going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what +girls imagine, Dosia. + +I suppose so, said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to +Lois. Would you like to see my ring? She turned the circle around on +her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. He gave it to me +last night. + +It is very handsome, said Lois. I suppose you will have to be +thinking of clothes soon, she added, with a glimmer of the natural +feminine interest in all that pertains to a wedding, since further +protest seemed futile. I will write to Aunt Theodosia. + +Thank you, said Dosia dutifully. + +A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably +beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches, and +strawberries as large as the peaches, and the contents of a box of +flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as +Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redgethe former +winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees +nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, jumping on her back whenever +she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered +herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! Nothing could be +sweeter than these. + +In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, she put on +her hat with the roses and went to make a call, long deferred and +hitherto impossible of accomplishment, on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a bride +of a few months, who, as Alice Torrington, had been one of the girls of +her outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but she +felt that Alice Waynes state of mind would be more sympathetic, even if +unconsciously so, than Lois. + +As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful +affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when he +had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him +an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on the +words: + +I have never known anyone with such a beautiful nature as yours, Miss +Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you happy. + +He did not himself care for motoringbeing, truth to tell, afraid of +itbut she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her +father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter come +up to stay with her after she was marrieddo anything for them that she +would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the shops in +town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and balls, and dressing them +in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the +time to come! She thought with a little awe that she hadnt known that +Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And the way he had spoken +of LawsonAh, Lawson! That name tugged at her heart; this suddenly +became one of those anguished moments when she yearned over him as over +a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only through her efforts. +She must never forget! Lawson, I believe in you. She stopped in the +shaded, quiet street with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the +words aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before +coming back to the eager surface planning of her own life, with an +intermediate throb of a new and deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so +upliftingly faced truth had only strength enough left now to evade it. +Perhaps some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had been +jarred confusingly out of touch. + +[Illustration: _Flowers and children, children and flowers_] + +Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just +returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from +above: + +Dosia Linden! Wont you come up-stairs? You dont mind, do you? + +No, indeed, answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and +pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than +she had expectedan informal reception and talk! With Dosias own +responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to +see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white neglige, might be +pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau. + +I hope you wont mind the appearance of this room, she announced, +after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. I went to town so early +this morning that I didnt have time to really set things to rights, and +I dont like the new maid to touch them. + +You have so many pretty things, said Dosia admiringly. + +Yes, havent I? Take that seat by the window, its cooler. Please dont +look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, +though he has his own chiffonier in the other roomhes such a _bad_ +boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his things for +him. + +Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly +responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not at +all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a great +deal of style, but she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm +of attraction because she was so happy. + +Have this fan, wont you? She went on talking: Harry and I saw you +and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had +stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the +loveliest thing! What a pity he wont go where there are girls! Harry is +quite jealous, though I tell him he neednt be. Mrs. Wayne paused with +a lovely flush before going on. You didnt see us, though we stopped +quite near you. My dear, its _very_ evident that She paused once +more, this time with arch significance. Oh, you neednt be afraid, I +never know anything until Im told. But George is such a good fellow! +Im sure I ought to knowhe was perfectly devoted to me. Hes not the +kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,girls are so foolish +and romantic,but hed be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says hes a +lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much happier +marriedthe right people, of course. + +Did you have a pleasant time while you were away? asked Dosia, as she +lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had +had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, +melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, instead, +one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her finger, +underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes roved +warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and +her husband, folding up her Harrys neckties as she chattered, her +fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She brought out +some of her pretty dresses afterwards for Dosias inspection. From the +open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes was distinctly +visibleHarrys shoes, which the wife laughingly put back into place as +she went and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even +those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched with sentiment +for her because the feet of her dearest had worn them. + +In Dosias world so far it was a matter of course that some people were +marriedtheir household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation +to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to +these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne +had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of +living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an +absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of +her indifference; the room choked her. George Buttons neckties, not to +speak of his shoes! + +Ill have to be going, she interrupted precipitately, rising as she +spoke. + +Why,Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at her +in surprise,whats the matter? Arent you well? + +Yes, yes, but I have an appointment, affirmed Dosia desperately. Ive +been enjoying it all so much, but Id forgotten I must goat once! +Good-by. + +She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, but it was +imperative that she should be alone, away from all suggestion of the +newly married. She hoped that there would be no visitors, but as she +neared the house she saw that there was some one on the piazzaGeorge +Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose above his white +waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled the rose in color as he came +to meet her. + +Why, I thought you were not coming until this evening, said Dosia +demandingly,not until you could see Justin. + +Did you think I could stay away as long as that? asked George. His +manner the night before had been almost reverential in the depth of his +honest emotion; the kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had seemed of +an impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed it. She was +conscious now of a change. + +Where is Lois? she asked, as they went up the steps together. + +The maid said she had stepped out for a moment. + +Then well sit here on the piazza and wait for her, said Dosia, +without looking at her lover. Taking the hat-pins out of her hat, she +deposited it on a chair with a quick decision of movement, and then +seated herself by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking +disappointed, was left perforce to the rocker on the other side. + +The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a rambling vine, open +toward the street; but around the corner of the house Japanese screens +walled it off from passers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet with big +bowls of roses. + +Come around to the other end of the porch, said George appealingly. + +No, said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; I like it here. + +She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread out her hands, +palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, which had been turned inward, +caught the sunshine gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled. +Dosia saw the smile and reddened. + +I wish you wouldnt sit there looking at me, she said in a tone which +she tried to make neutral. + +Come down to the other end of the piazzajust for a moment. + +No! said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement and changed her tone +sharply: Oh, theres a spider on the table there, crawling toward me! +Please take it away. Her voice rose uncontrollably. I hate spiders +oh, I _hate_ spiders! Im afraid of them. Make it go away! please! +Therenow youve got it; throw it off the piazza, quick! Dont bring it +near me! + +The little spider wont hurt you, said George enjoyingly. + +Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her +deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red +lips quivering, was distractingly lovely; fear gave to her quick, +uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of +his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the +innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb and +forefinger, a little nearer to hera little nearer yet. There is a type +of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is +an exquisitely funny joke. + +Dont, said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready to fly from the +chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with Georges fatuously smiling +face behind it. The next instant she had fled wildly down to the +screened corner of the veranda, with George after her, only to be +stopped by the screens at the end. His following arms closed tightly +around her as he kissed her in happy triumph. + +After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia stood perfectly +still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession that came into +play at such times. She seemed to yield entirely now to the rightful +caresses of an accepted lover as she said in a perfectly even and casual +tone of voice: + +Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my handkerchief from +up-stairs. Ill be right back again. + +Dont be gone long, said George fondly, releasing her +half-unconsciously at the accent of custom. + +No, said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him coquettishly as she +went off with unhurried stepto dart up two pairs of stairs like a +flying, hunted thing, and into her room, to lock the door fast and bolt +it as if from the thoughts that pursued her. + +Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled the door-knob +ineffectually before she knocked. + +Dosia, whats the matter? To whom are you talking? Let me in! Katy +said, when she came up, you would not answershe said Mr. Sutton had +been walking up and down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in; +let me in this minute! + +The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and the door flew +open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her hair in wild disorder, was +standing in the center of the room, fiercely rubbing her already scarlet +cheeks with a rough towel. Every trace of assumed listlessness had +vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant eyes, and +talking half-disconnectedly. + +Never let him come here againnever, never! she appealed to Lois. + +[Illustration: _Never let him come here againnever, never!_] + +Whom do you mean? + +George Sutton! + +A contraction passed over her face; she began rubbing again with renewed +fury. + +Dont do that, Dosia! Youll take the skin off. Stop it! + +Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel +away from her. Dosia, sit down by me here on the bedhow youre +trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not, youll take +the skin off your face. + +I want to take it off, whispered Dosia intensely. I hate him, I hate +him! I never want to see him again. I cant see him again! I threw the +ring out in the hall somewhere. Youll have to find it I couldnt +have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I cant see him +again; promise me that Ill never see him againpromise, _promise_! +She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that protection. + +Yes, yes, dear, I promise, said Lois with a sudden warmth of sympathy +such as she had never before felt for the girl. This situation, this +feeling, she could comprehendit might have been her own in similar +case. She had known girls before who had been engaged for but a day or a +week, and then revolted; it was not so new a circumstance as the world +fancies. + +She drew the towel now from Dosias relaxed fingers, and held her closer +as she said: + +There, be quiet, Dosia, and dont make yourself ill. I dont see what +that poor man is going to doof course hell feel dreadfully; but you +cant help that nowits a great deal better than finding out the +mistake later. Ill tell him not to come again, I promise you. Of +course, Ill have to speak to Justin; I dont know what he will say! +Lois broke into a rueful smile. Dosia, Dosia! What scrape will you get +into next? + +Isnt it dreadful! gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked +at Lois with tragic eyes. + +Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I +can never be nice againno one can ever think Im nice again! No one +can ever_love_ me in this world! She buried her hot face in Lois +bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the +others incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently a +woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the +loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly: + +It seems so strangethings beginand you think they are going to turn +out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden they +endand there is nothing more. Everything is all beginningand then it +endsthere is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again! + +Nonsense! Youll feel very differently about it all after a while, +said Lois sensibly. + +I dont want to go down-stairs again. Dosia began to shake violently. +If he were to come back + +Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner, said Lois +humoringly. I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, youll have to +promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment +Im out of the room. + +No, Ill be good, murmured Dosia submissively. Oh, Lois, youre so +kind to me! I love you so much! + +Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not +eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to the door by the maid, brought in +to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that first +night of her arrivaloh, so long ago!after tempest and disaster. Yet +then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone down through +everything, and now there was no future, only a murky past, and she a +poor girl who had dropped so far out of the way of happiness that she +could never get back to it, never be nice again. That hand that had once +held hers so firmly, so steadily, that she could sleep secure with just +the comfort of its remembered touchthe thought of it had become only +pain, like everything else. Oh, back of all this shaming hurt with +Lawson and George Sutton was another shame, that went deeper and deeper +still. Since that visit of Bailey Girards, she had known that he had +thought of her as she had thought of him, with a knowledge that could +not be controverted. It is astonishing that we, who feel ourselves to be +so dependent on speech as a means of communication, have our intensest, +our most revealing moments without it. He had thought of her as she had +of him, and, with the thought of her in his heart, had been content +easily that it should be no more. + +Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her dreams,lover, +protector, dearest friend,to have sought her mightily with the +privilege and the prerogative of a man, so that she might have had no +experience to live through but that white experience with him! + +Dosia! Open the door quickly. + +It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She +stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held +out a telegramfor the second time the transmitter of bad news from the +South. The message read: Your father is ill. Come at once. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + + +There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings, +followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition +from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months fly +by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone, there +is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too much stress +on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the current of our +lives, and do not take into account that drama which never ceases to be +acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which takes place within +ourselves. + +It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after +extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but +temporarya condition to be ended next week or the week after at +farthest. Her fathers illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking +every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter; and after +his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while, with only +Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, +looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness +and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn +money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to some of the +temporary tribe at the hotelan existence in which self was submerged +in loving care for those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was +always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and too much +of a luxury to have any of its precious moments wasted in wakeful +dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about any more. But when +she crept into her low bed she turned away from the moonlight, because +there are times, when one is young, when moonlight is very hard to bear. + +The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of its +resources, when Mrs. Lindens brother in San Francisco offered her and +her children a home with himan offer which, naturally, did not include +Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she had worked +so hard for them, they were not to belong to her for her very own. The +aunt whose generosity had given her the money for her musical education +had also died, leaving a small sum in trust for the girl; it was that +which furnished her with means when she went once more to stay at the +Alexanders. Justin himself had written to see if she could come. + +There was another baby now, a couple of months old, and Lois needed her. +No fairy-story maiden this, going out to seek her fortune, who took an +uneventful train journey this timeonly a very tired girl, worn with +work and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to lean her head +against the back of the car-seat and feel the burden of anxiety and care +slip from her for a little while. + +Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for those whom we love +may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin, the blue veins on +her temples showed more plainly, her face was no longer the typical +white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and +inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had tasted +of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known suffering, +she had faced shame and disappointment andtruth; yes, through +everything she had faced thattaken herself to account, probed, +condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained +in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from +a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she +might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into +being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweetthe soul of that Dosia +who was made to be loved. + +If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago, so +had the conditions changed in the household to which she went. Justin +had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has achieved +what he has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the +silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously drops +through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business, +quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big +enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had +been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been +hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small +rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring townboth glad, +in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful arbiter. +Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in request by +fifty people now, for many thingsfor many more, indeed, than had been +thought of at first; every week plans in special adjustments were made +to fit the machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not only a +success in itself, but was destined to fit into more and more of the +needs of the working world as a standard product. + +Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over +to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted to +see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and +successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of all +this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits had +always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in +constant and growing need of money. + +Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increasedprices of +copper and steel, of machinery, of wages, in addition to the larger +number of hands employed, and the rent of the additional floor. It was +always necessary for ones peace of mind to go back to the value of the +material stock and the assets to be counted on in the future. The steady +branching out of the business in every direction was proof of the fact +that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, +fewer opportunitiesfinancial suicide. + +It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be +seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened. +If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the +doors must open farther. No matter how one tries to see all around the +consequences of any change, any undertaking, there always arise minor +consequences which from their very nature must be unforeseen, and yet +which may turn out to be the really powerful factors in the main issue; +unimportant genii that, let out of their bottles, swell immeasurably. +The consequences of the fire, small as it was, seemed never-ending. The +defective bars had proved a disastrous supply for the machine, in more +ways than one. + +Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his own retrieval, he +had borrowed the ten thousand from Lewiston, and had used part of the +money to pay the interest to the others; and later, in the flush of +reinstatement, he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, a +loan to be called by him at any time. Lewistons loan had seemed easy of +repayment at six months, Justin knew when the money was coming in, but +he had been obliged, after all, to anticipate, and get his bills +discounted before they came due for other purposes, often paying huge +tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed the note for sixty days, +and then for sixty more, but with the proviso that this was the last +extension. + +In short, the whole process of competently keeping afloat had been gone +through, with a definite aim of accomplishment; Caters cooperation, +about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the +business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money +and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. Justin had +approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him +cautiously negative where once he had seemed friendlily suggesting. + +Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power of the man behind +it, which must not only comprehend and direct the larger issues, but +must be able to carry along smoothly all the easily entangling threads +of detail; he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have the +untiring nervous energy that can hold out through any crisis. Such men +may go to pieces after incredible effort, but they are on the way to +success first. Danger only quickens the sure leap to safety. + +Justin, preminently clear-headed, had been conscious lately of two +phasesone an almost preternatural illumination of intellect, and the +other a sort of brain-inertia, more soul- and body-fatiguing than any +pain. There were seasons when he was obliged to think when he could +instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, competent, but +underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation +and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first night +of his agreement with Leverich was as a childs play with toy bricks is +to the building of an edifice of stone. + +The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely with the +daily need of money at home for petty uses; a condition of affairs which +often happens at the birth of a child, when the household is at loose +ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater in every direction at the +time when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed never to +have enough change in his pockets, no matter how much he brought home. + +In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing +when there is no other passion to divide themthe nature grows all one +way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always as +dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of affection, +the love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of all +menthat unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the cause of +the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone out from +this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift. + +Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when +she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she had +always added the proviso, if he could afford it, and accepted the fact +either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and more +affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she keenly +felt, less personally loving. + +If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to go +out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on the +lounge; and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner thread +of sympathy was lacking. + +Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the +most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which +she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending as +she cowered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold and +chill for lack of that vital warmth. + +There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him, but +always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that which +seemed as if it could never change began to change. + +Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference. +Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane and +heroic in times of real danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave, +thoughtful for Zaidee and Hedge and Justin even while she trembled, +excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband. + +Then, afterwards, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in at +the end of each day and sat down by his wifes bedside, holding her +blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a sweet, +sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though +the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that +one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had +been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct +calamitous illness to which she looked forward as one might look forward +to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a +manifestation of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that of a +child, to be soothed by reason. + +Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging fear. One cause +for disquieting thought was removed. Now the helplessness of this little +family, for whom he was the provider, tugged at a swelling heart. + +As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than was his wont, +he diverged from his usual custominstead of entering his own doorway, +he went across the street to Caters after a moments hesitation. Now +that Caters cooperation was at the consummating point, it was wiser not +to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich and Martin were keenly for +its success, Justins credit would rise immeasurably with it. The +Typometer Company had absorbed the minor machines with so little trouble +that the unabsorbability of the timoscript had seemed an unnecessary +stumbling block. Time and time again Justin had sought Cater with +tabulated figures and unanswerable arguments. The combination, he firmly +believed, would be highly beneficial for boththe field was, in its +way, too narrow to be divided with the highest profit; together they +could command the trade. + +Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,a word against which +he was principled, with obstinate refusal to differentiate as to kind, +quality, or intent. Like many men who are given to a far-seeing +philosophy in speech, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to +action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring to be +continually reassured about conditions which seemed the very a-b-c of +commerce. The rivalry between the two firms had been apparently +good-natured, yet a little of the sharp edge of competition had shown +signs of cutting through the bond. + +The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript had cut under; +then the typometer had gone as low as was wise, and the timoscript had +begun to weaken in its defenses. + +Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, but rose to +shake hands. There was a look of melancholy in his eyes, in spite of his +smile of greeting. + +Anything wrong with you? asked Justin, instinctively noticing the look +rather than the smile. + +No, said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, and leaned back, +the light from the high unshaded window striking full on his lean yellow +countenance. No, theres nothing wrong. Got some things off my mind, +things that have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon I dont +feel quite easy without em. + +I think youre very lucky, said Justin. The light from the high window +fell on his face, tooon his brown hair, turning a little gray at the +temples, on the set lines of his face, in which his eyes, keen and blue, +looked intently at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot that was +crossed over his knee was excellently shod. + +Cater shifted a little in his seat. Well, I dont know. My experience +is some different from the usual run, I reckon; I never had any big +streak of luck that it didnt get back at me afterwards. There was my +marriageI know it aint the thing to talk about your marriage, but you +do sometimes. My wifes a fine woman,yes, sir, I was mighty lucky to +get her,but I didnt know how to live up to her family. Its been +that-a-way all my life. Sures I get to ringin the bells, the floorin +caves in under me. + +Well see that the flooring holds, now that youre coming in with us, +said Justin good-naturedly. Ive got some propositions to put up to you +to-day. + +Cater shook his head. Theres no use of your putting up any +propositions. Ive been drawin on my well of thought so hard lately +that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin plumb across the street. +Ive been cipherin down to the fact that I cant go it alone, any +moren you,there we agree; hold on, now!but I cant combine. + +You cant! cried Justin, with unusual violence. Why not? + +Well, you know my feelins about trusts, andI like you, Mr. +Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin. I +dont believe in it. Itll fail when you count on it most, itll cramp +on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isnt +so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I cant stand Martin havin +a finger in any concern _I_ have a hold of. + +Hes clever enough to make what he touches pay, said Justin. + +Caters eyebrows contracted. You say hes clever because hes +trickybecause hes sharp. He isnt clever enough to make money +honestly, he isnt big enough. You and me, were honest, or try to be, +but we havent the brain to give every man his just due, and get ahead, +too. Its the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to play +it! You and me, we cant do it; we aint got the brain and we aint got +the nerve; _I_ havent. Youve just ever-lastingly got to do the best +for yourself if youve got a family; the best _as_ you see it. + +Whats all this leading up to? What change have you been making, +Cater? asked Justin, with stern abruptness. + +Ive given the agency of the machine to Hardanger. + +Hardanger! Justins face flushed momentarily, then became set and +expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then +tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger! + +I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this change, +continued Cater. Ive been getting the steel fittins on contract from +Benschoten again, as I did at first; itll come cheaper in the end. +Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was sorryI was sorry +to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? Ive got to +cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can now. + +I suppose so. + +I wanted to tell you the first one, said Cater. + +Well, I congratulate you, said Justin formally, rising. + +This isnt going to make any difference in the friendship between me +and you, Mr. Alexander? Ive thought a powerful lot of your friendship. +If Id a seen any way to have come in with you, Id a done it. But +business aint going to interfere between two such good friends as we +are! + +Why, no, said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal which +still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false. The +handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship seemed to +dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice. + +_Hardanger!_ + +Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors in the trade of +two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by Hardanger & Co. +meant its successthey took nothing that was not likely to succeed; +they _made_ it succeedfor them. Their agents in all parts of the known +world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard to be reached +by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was unassailed; they kept +scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only bar to putting an +article into their hands was the fact that their termsexcept in the +case of certain standard articles which they were obliged to +haveembraced nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins +coming to the original owners. Everything had to be figured down, and +still further and further down, by those owners, to make that margin +possible. It was cut-throat all the way througha policy that made for +the rottenness of trade. + +Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations as to +Hardanger, with the conclusion that there was far more money outside, +even if one must go a little more slowly. It was better to go a little +more slowly, for the sake of getting so much more out of it in the end. +Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything else failed. +Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same way; that was the +understanding between them. But now? Backed by this powerful agency, the +timoscript assumed disquieting proportions. In the distance, a time not +so very far distant either, Justin could see himself squeezed to the +wall, the output of his factory bought up by Hardanger for the price of +old ironforced into it, whether he would or no. Why had he been so +short-sighted? Why hadnt he made terms himself sooner? But Cater had +been a fool to give in to those terms when, by combining, they could +have swung trade between them to their own measure. Then Hardanger might +have been obliged to seek _them_, to take their price!Hardanger, who +could afford to laugh at his pretensions now! + +He thought of Cater without malicewith, instead, a shrewd, kind +philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of pity mixed with his wonder. +So that was the way a man was caught stumbling between the meshes, +blinded, dulled, unconsciously maimed of honor, while still feeling +himself erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written agreement +between them that either should consult the other before seeking +Hardanger; but some promises should be all the stronger for not being +written. + +This thing _couldnt_ happen; in some way, he must get his foot inside +the door, so that it couldnt shut on him. There was that note of +Lewistons, due in thirty daysno, twenty-five now. What about that? + +Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after drayful of +boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the foreman, came into the +office with some estimates, pointing out the figures with a small strip +of steel tubing held absently in his fingers. + +While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign birth +obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than sturdily +independentthe air and the eye of the skilled mechanic. On his own +ground he was master, and Justin, with a smile, deferred to him. But +Justin broke into Bullens calculations abruptly, after a while, to ask: + +Whats that youve got there? It looks like one of those bars that +nearly smashed us. + +Youve got a good eye, sir, said Bullen approvingly. A year and a +half ago youd not have seen any difference between one bit of steel and +another. But theres one thing I didnt see about it myself until +Venlyhes a new man weve taken onpointed it out to me. He came +across a case of these to-day wed thrown out in the waste-heap. We +thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a +fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a +minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they werent from the +Benschoten factoryhe was turned off from there last week, theyre +cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked +like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the +magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, twas right he was! He +says theyve got piles of them theyve been workin off on the trade at +a cut price. Venly he said he didnt have any stomach for a skin game +like that. + +Thats a pretty ruinous way to do business, isnt it? asked Justin. + +Oh, theyre going to sell out in July, so they dont care. I pity +anyone thats counting on any sort of machine thats got these in em. +Would you take the glass and look for yourself, sir? Every one of em is +flawed! + + + + +CHAPTER NINETEEN + + +Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a Leverichs words were +not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat +tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not +meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarlinga +wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on +Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute +anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, +chill self-possession. + +Youre sure the agreements made? + +Caters been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the +past three days; hes loaded up with machines. + +Leverich swore again. Dd fools, not to have made terms with +Hardanger first! If wed only known! If there was only some way to put a +spoke in the wheel, even yet! + +Oh, Ive got the spoke, easily enough, said Justin indifferently, the +only trouble is, I cant use it. + +Got a spoke! Why in heaven didnt you say that before? Leverich came +down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling +ahead on its casters. What are you sitting here for? What do you mean +by telling me that you cant use it? + +Just what I say. But its not worth talking about. + +See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his? + +I suppose I might. + +And youre not going to do it? + +I cant, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way +that I cant touch it. + +The information Its something damaging to do with the machine? + +Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without answering. + +You have proof? + +Whats the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, I tell you, I cant +use it. This isnt any funny business, you can see that. Dont you +suppose, if I could use it, that I would? But there are some things a +man cant doat any rate, _I_ cant. And that settles it. + +Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently enough in the last +few days, since the combination had been unwillingly given into his +hands, but always with the foregone conclusion. The devilgranting that +there is one,doesnt, as a rule, actively try to tempt us to evilhe +simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our reason. But this +time he had no field for action. To use secret information against +Cater, that could never have been had but for Caters kindness to him in +helping him to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every +time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for argument to suggest +that this very deed of kindness had worked his disasterthe fact +remained the same. He might do other things, he might do worse +thingsthis thing he could not do, not though the refusal worked his +own ruin, not though Caters ruin with Hardanger was insured anyway, but +too late for the typometer to profit by it. Even if the typometer could +by some means keep afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple +of years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a foreign +country. + +Justin had no excess of sentiment, no quixotic impulse urged him to go +and tell Cater what he had learned. It was Caters business to look +after his end of the game, if the price of material or labor was too +cheap, he must know that there was something wrong with it. The stream +of Justins mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice +toward himselfnay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon +that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now +with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a +situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled +with. + +How about your obligations? Do you call this fair dealing to us, +Alexander? Theres Lewistons noteonce this deal was settled we would +have paid that, as you know. But its out of the question as things +stand. Well have to get our money out the best way we can. If this is +your sense of honorto sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, +lets talk this out. When it comes to talking of ruin, no man can afford +to stand on terms. We didnt put you into the typometer business on any +kindergarten principlesit isnt to form your character. What we did, +we did for profit; and if the profit isnt there, we get out. Weve no +objection to doing a kindness for anyone, if we can do it and make a +profit, but it stands to reason that were not in the business for +philanthropy any more than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we +were willing to give you a place in the game if you could run it to suit +us, but we dont consider any scheme that doesnt make moneywhat +doesnt make money has to go. Profit, profit, profitthats what every +sane man puts first, and theres no justice in losing a chance to make +it. What you lose, another man takesif you make another mans wife and +children better off, you stint your own. Youve got to consider a +question on all sides. No woman respects a man who cant make money; +its his everlasting business to make money, and she knows it. Your wife +wont think much of your fine scruples if shes to go without for +emand, by the Lord, shes right! When you go into business, youve +got to make up your mind to one of two things: youve either got to step +hard on the necks of those below you, or youve got to lie down and let +them wipe their feet on you. + +Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. Since none +was offered, he went on, with the large and easy manner of one who feels +the justice of his convictions: No man ever accused me of being close. +Im free-handed, if I say it that shouldnt. I like to give, and I _do_ +give. If theres money wanted for charity, the committees know very well +where to come. And my wife likes to give, too; her names on the books +of twenty charitable organizations. But we give out of money Ive made +by _not_ being free-handedby getting every last cent that belonged to +me. You see, I dont leave my wife out of my calculationsany mans a +fool that does. Shes got the right to have as good as I can give her. I +wouldnt talk like this to most men, Alexander, but between you and me +its different. It pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when youve +got to go home after a hard days work; you take a dissatisfied woman, +and shell make your home a hell. I know menGreat Scott! I dont know +how they live! He paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his +head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side of him. + +When I say Ive made the money, continued Leverich, I mean that I +actually _have_ made most of itmade it out of nothing! like the first +chapter of Genesis. If a man has money to start with, he can add to it +as easily as you can roll up a snowballits no credit to him. But Ive +had only my brains. Ive seen money where other men couldnt, and +nothing has stood in my way of getting to it; thats the whole secret of +success. And my attitudes fairyou couldnt find a fairer. When one of +your clerks falls sick, you pay him his full salary for three or four +months till hes around again. _I_ know! Well, I dont do any such +stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list once for three +months, and nobody paid me. After the first month I was bounced, and I +didnt expect anything else. I didnt expect any philanthropical +business, and I dont give it. Thats fair, isnt it? I dont give +quarter, and I dont expect any. If Im squeezed, I pay. I dont stand +still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can do and what I +cant do. I dont snivel about what you call moral obligations; I only +recognize money obligations. Why, see here, Alexander, he broke off, +if you use the influence you spoke of, you dont have to tell me what +it isyou dont have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater himself +neednt know that you had anything to do with it. + +But Id know, said Justin quietly. + +Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded. + +Very well, then, it comes down to this: If you fail us now, out of any +of your fool scruples toward that poor devil across the street,whos +bound to get the blood sucked out of him anyway,you ruin your own +prospects, and you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. +By, if you see any honor in that, I dont. + +Mr. Leverich, said Justin, raising his head swiftly, with a steely +gleam in his eyes that matched the others, when I try to cheat you or +Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, Ill give you +leave to say what you please. At present Ill say good morning. + +Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his +desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so, +against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next +room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge +that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than +the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. +Warren, of Rondell Brothers. Each turned to look back at the other, and +both men bowed; the action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted +by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the +street. + +The clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt actively +stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward Lewistons +note the different sums coming in this month. There were large bills to +be paid to the typometers credit by several firms, one of them +Coneways. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for the +entire yearit was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to +Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next, +Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their +principal after these intervening six months of the year were over. +Well, let them! Lewistons note was what he had to think of now. + +All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious to the +sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate +success; it is the one trite, universal reason for startingthat faith +is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful +ventures, while never really succeeding, do not fail at once; they are +always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking lower all the +time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith +alonea sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to +seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this +flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. +For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, +failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he +should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think +harder to find a way of accomplishment, that was all. + +His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverichs, but it +lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned down the street that led to +the factory, unaltered, since his first coming to it, save for the +transformation of the neglected house he had noticed then, with its +grewsome interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted shop +long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. There was not a +corner, not a building, along that too familiar way, that was not hung +with some thought of care; there were moments of such strong repulsion +that he felt as if he couldnt turn down that street againmoments +lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched yawning mouth +of a doorway occasioned a physical nauseaa foolish, womanish state +which irritated him. + +The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment of orders and +bills, and letters on minor points, and questions as to the typometer. +The mail was rather apt to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large +trade. Two letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium on +the use of the machine. In spite of an enormous and long-outstanding +bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for paymentone of +those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become +staggeringthere was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the +destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power. + +A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in his employ, came in +to get help in collecting his insurance; she was timid before Justin, +deeply grateful for his kind and effective assistance. Two men called at +different times, for advice and introductions to important people. A +friend brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. There +was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to do with the payment +of ones bills. + +Justin took both the friend and the customer out to lunch, his pleasant +sense of hospitality only dimmed by the disagreeable fact of its taking +every cent of the five dollars he had expected to last him for the week. +He was strapped. The luncheon took longer, also, than he had counted +on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed to lead up only to sordid +and anxious details and a sense of non-accomplishment, induced also by +small requisitions from different people presupposing cash from a +cash-drawer that was empty. + +It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harkers assistance, on the +large sums coming in at the end of the month from Coneways. There were a +hundred ways for them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, +after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would be satisfied +with a partial payment and extend the rest of the note. While they were +still consulting, word was brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there. + +Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, +smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and fashion set at odds at +present by a very pale and anxious face and eager, dilated black eyes. +He cut short Justins greeting with the words: + +Ive just come over to speak about that note, Alexander. + +Well, I was just wanting to speak to you about it myself, said Justin +easily. Have a cigar? + +Thank you, said Lewiston mechanically, and as mechanically holding out +his hand for the cigar, evidently forgetting it the next moment. The +fact is, I dont want to seem importunate, but if you could pay off that +note fifteen days before date,a week from to-day, that is,wed +discount it to satisfy you. I didnt want to bother you about it, and I +tried outside first, but nobody will take up the paper just now, except +at a ruinous rate. If you could make it convenient, Alexander Young +Lewiston sat with his small, eager face bent forward over his knees, his +lips twitching slightly. You know that money wasnt loaned on strictly +business principles, Alexander, but for friendship; I got father to +consent to it. If you could let us have it now, it would save us a world +of trouble. Its really not muchonly ten thousand. + +Justin shook his head, his keen blue eyes fixed on the other. I cant +let you have it, Lewiston; I wish I could! But Im waiting on payments +myself. Cant you pull out without it? + +Lewiston drew in his breath. Oh, yes, of course well have to, but it +meansWell, I know you would if you could, Alexander, I told father +sofather in a way holds me responsible, he was in London when I +renewed the note the last time. There isnt anything to interfere with +the payment when its due? + +On my honor, no, said Justin. You shall have it then without fail. + +For if that should slip up continued young Lewiston, wrapped in +somber contemplation of his own affairs alone; he threw his arms outward +with a gesture suddenly tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then +wrung Justins hand silently and departed. + +Are you busy, Alexander? They said I could come in. + +Why, Girard! + +Justin wheeled a chair around with an instantly brightened face. Sit +down. Im mighty glad to see you. He looked smilingly at his visitor, +whose presence, long-limbed, straight, clean, and clear-eyed, always +elicited a peculiar admiration from other men. I heard that you had a +room at the Snows now, while Billy is away, but I havent laid eyes on +you for a month. + +Ive been coming in on a later train every morning and going out again +on a very much later one at night. Im back in town on the paper for a +while. + +Why dont you settle down to something worth while? asked Justin, with +the reserved disapproval of the business man for any mode of life but +his own. + +Settle down to this kind of thing? said Girard thoughtfully. Well, I +did think of it last year, when I undertook those commissions for you. +But whats the useyet awhile, at any rate? You see, I can always make +enough money for what I want and to spare, and theres nobody else to +care. I like my liberty! The love of trade doesnt take hold of me, +somehowand you have to have such a tremendous amount of capital to +keep your place. By the way, have you sold the island yet? The island +was a small one up near Nova Scotia, taken once for a debt. + +Not yet. + +Girard gave him a quick glancewith the instant penetration of a man +who has known hard times himself, he detected the signs of it in +another; the perception lent a sort of under-warmth and kindness to his +voice as he asked: How are things going with you? + +Fine, said Justin in a conventionally prosperous tone, with a sudden +sight of a bottomless pit yawning below him. Ive had a few things on +my mind latelybut theyre all right now. By the way, how do you like +it at the Snows? + +Oh, fairly well. Girards gray eyes twinkled in an irrepressible +smile. I score high at present. They all approve of me, and I am told +that I am the only man who has never run into the Boston fern or got +tangled in the Wandering Jew. Miss Bertha and I have long talks +togethershes great. As for Mrs. Snowshe heard Sutton speak of her +the other night to Ada as the old lady. I assure you that since He +shook his head, and both men laughed. + +Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again, said Justin +hospitably, indescribably cheered by some soul-offered sympathy that lay +below the trivial converse. + +Thank you, said Girard, an indefinable stiffening change coming over +him momentarily, to disappear at once, however, as he went on: By the +way, I mustnt forget what I came for before I hurry off. + +He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as he rose. Do +you remember lending that fifty dollars to my friend Keston last year? +He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this. + +Id forgotten all about it, averred Justin. He had not realized until +he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength, +with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of itnothing +back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of +life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand +dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with +this paltry fifty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free +breath, felt a sheer, uncalculating lightness of spirit that showed how +terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very +feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine. + +He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to +Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers: + +Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways isnt due +until the 31stthe very last minute! But hes always prompt, thank +Heavenwhat are you doing? + +Knocking on wood, said Harker, with a grim smile. + +Oh, knock on wood all you want to, returned Justin. + +He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers. +It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week. +While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his +eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: + + GREAT CRASH + CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL + IN BOSTON + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY + + +I dont think Justin looks very well, said Dosia that afternoon. She +was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out +half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been +up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she +looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not very strong. + +The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with only a round +forehead and a small pink nose visible, was of that satisfactory variety +entirely given to sleep; Zaidee and even Redge, adoring little sister +and brother, had been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely +unstirring was their small burden. Lois, who had passionately rebelled +against the prospect of additional motherhood, exhibited a not unusual +phase of it now in as passionately adoring this second boy. He seemed +peculiarly, intensely her own, not only a baby, but a spiritual +possession that communicated a new strength to her. Lois was changed. +She had always been beautiful, as a matter of fact, but there was now +something withheld, mysterious, in her expression, as if she were taking +counsel of some half-slumberous force within, like one listening at a +shell for the murmur of the ocean. + +Not only Lois, but everything else, seemed changed to Dosia, at the same +time being also flatly, unchangeably natural. She had longedoh, how +she had longed!to be back here. Even while loving and working in her +so-called home, she had felt that this was her real home, although here +her cruelest blows had fallen on her; even while bleeding with the +wrench of parting from her own flesh and blood, she had felt that this +was the true home, for here she had really livedand it was the home of +the nicer, more delicate instincts. After the crude housekeeping, the +lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing a grinding struggle with +circumstance, it was a blessed relief to get back to a sphere where +minor details were all in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, +with their three children, kept only one maid now, but even that +restriction did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and cold water! + +Yet she had also dreaded this returning,how she had dreaded it!with +that old sickening shame which came over her inevitably as she thought +of certain people and places and days. The mere thought of seeing Mrs. +Leverich or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was like passing +through fire. One braces ones self to withstand the pain of scenes of +joy or sorrow revisited, to find that, after all, when the moment comes, +there is little of that dreaded painit has been lived through and the +climax passed in that previsioning which imagination made more intense, +more harrowingly real, than the reality. + +[Illustration: _Even Redge had been allowed to hold him_] + +Mrs. Leverich stopped her carriage one day to greet Dosia, and to ask +her, with a tentative semblance of her old effusion, to come and make +her a visitan effusion which immediately died down into complete +non-interest, on Dosias polite refusal; and the incident was not +especially heart-racking at the time, though afterwards it set her +unaccountably trembling. Mrs. Leverich had in the carriage with her a +small, thin, long-nosed, under-bred-looking man with a pale-reddish +mustache and hair, who, gossip said, passed most of his time at the +Leverichshe was seen out driving alone with Myra nearly every day. He +was an old friend from home. It had been gossip at first, but it was +growing to be scandal now, with audible wonder as to how much Mr. +Leverich knew about it. + +Her avoidance of George Sutton was as nothing to his desire of avoiding +her; he dived with surreptitious haste down side streets when he saw her +coming, or disappeared within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted +him inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce to take +off his hat and murmur, Good morning, he turned pale and was evidently +scared to death. After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snowusually Ada and her mother, +though occasionally Bertha served as escort instead of the latter. The +elder Snows, in spite of this apparent security, were in a state of +constant nervous tension over Mr. Suttons attention to Ada; he had not +spoken yet, but it had begun to be felt severely of late that he ought +to speak. Whenever Ada came into the house, her face was eagerly scanned +by both mother and sister to see from its look if it bore any trace of +the fateful words having been uttered. Everyone knew, though how no one +could tell, that that bold thing, Dosia Linden, had tried to get him +once, and failed. + +The thing that had unaccountably stirred her most since her arrival was +an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge +held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily +along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the +post-office; he seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw +back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them +white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, +with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, +and came forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright courtesy, a +punctilious warmth of manner. He walked along with her a few paces as he +talked, lifting Zaidee over a flooded crossing, before going once more +on his way. He was nothing to Dosia, the stranger who had killed her +ideal, yet all day it was as if his image were photographed in the +colors of life upon the retina of her eye; she could not push it away, +try as she might. + +Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through +the letters written by Lois; he had been reported as going on in his old +way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing +more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except +Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her now position of +sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an +outsider any more; she _belonged_. + +[Illustration: _After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snow_] + +As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with +something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be +loved, now feltafter a year of trial and conflict with deaththat she +only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even +though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and +tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, +fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal +depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but +when Dosia said her prayers, she got, child-fashion, very near to a +Someone who brought her an intimate, tender comfort of resurrection and +of life. + +I dont think Justin seems well, she repeated, Lois, looking up at her +with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice +of the remark. He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I +came. + +He has something on his mind, assented Lois, with a note of languor in +her voice, I suppose its the businessI made up my mind to ask him +about it to-night; he has been out every evening lately, and I hardly +see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I dont get +down to breakfast. + +Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning, cried Dosia, with +compunction at having so far forgotten it. He said that Mr. Larue had +come in to inquire about you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket +of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow. + +Eugene Larue! Lois lips relaxed into a pleased curve, a slight color +touched her cheek. That was very nice of him; he knew Id like to look +forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses! + +I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after you, continued +Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that +tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes. + +Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows. Billys out West. + +So Ive heard, said Dosia. + +It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of +all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her +pathway now, after that desire was gone! + +Youd better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired, its time for +you to take a little rest. Ill see to the children, I hope baby will +stay asleep. Let me put this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the +shades? + +No, Id rather have the light. Please hand me that book over there on +the stand, said Lois, holding out her hand for the big, old-fashioned +brown volume that Dosia brought to her. + +You oughtnt to read, you ought to go to sleep, said Dosia, with +tender severity. + +Im not going to read, returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over +the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the +sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with +himalone with him, to think. + +The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the title-page +proclaimed, The Womans Kingdom, and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A +neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her +convalescencein all the time she had had it, she had never read any +further than that title-page. + +There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another +son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a +woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again, +spiritually as well as physically; in those long, restful hours +afterwards, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a +freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed +tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger +bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision, and a +peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown +before. + +Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward +either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little +boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible +corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from herfor a +little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of +those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; +even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on +one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet +to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husbands gaze when +he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk +about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was +as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child. + +One evening he came in to sit by her,her convalescence had been a long +and dragging one,and she had paused in the midst of telling him +something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised +herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had +fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly +exhausted! Everything proclaimed ithis attitude, grimly grotesque in +the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he +had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head +resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply +upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in +those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the +transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly +lifeless. He slept without moving,almost, it seemed, without +breathing,while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, +dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed +change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she +stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed +to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an +icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, +never + +Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, Did you +speak? + +Oh, you frightened me so! Dont go to sleep like that again, said +Lois, with a shaking voice. Come here. + +He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers +with a rush of painful emotion. Why, you mustnt get worked up over a +little thing like that, he objected lightly, going out of the room +afterwards with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him +with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought +of him without any idea of benefit to herself. + +The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her +attention oddlyThe Womans Kingdom. Another phrase correlated with +it in her memoryQueen of the Home. The home was supposed to be +womans domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, +sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. _The Womans Kingdom, +Queen of the Home._ Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of +retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the babys fingers; _they_ +kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, +bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a +queen! Home and the heart of her husbandthere lay her womans kingdom, +her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none +other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as +her rule made it; she must be judged by her governmentas she was queen +enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words. + +Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,set +in motion by those magic words,when she lay at rest in the afternoons, +with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside +her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never +perceive from imagination, but only from experiencewho cannot even +adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not +personally lived through. No advice touches them, for the words that +embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past +seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same +circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom +look backthe present, that is always climbing on into the future, +occupies them exclusively. + +Lois with The Womans Kingdom in her hand, felt that some source of +power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her +grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish +thoughts came with the wordshistoric names of women whom men had loved +devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they +themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There +were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other +generations; Queens indeed! She couldnt really interest one man! She +thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those +who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the +street had no other object in life than purveying to the household +comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from +him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple +farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage, +nothing more; they were bored to death by each others society. Another +couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both +sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be +satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were +an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very +much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one +husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young. +Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man +admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired +her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, +betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it +accomplished? + +How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larueshe +could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of +conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations +were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her +womans kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if +he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to +knowget his guidanceBut Lois was before all things inviolably a +wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and +Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief +moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, +conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene +Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that +way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she +and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had +known it would be, else she had not dared to make the testthe man who +was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband. +Justin! + +With The Womans Kingdom in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek +of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some +knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now +really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking wellthat +was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make +him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; +she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able +to think of nothing, of no one, but herhe had not always thought of +her! No, noshe would not remember that, _she would not pity herself_. +She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effortmen liked you +to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of +his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, +painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he +didnt look well. Oh, when he came home to-night! + +She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown +with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more +brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply +blue. The children exclaimed over their pretty mamma; she looked +younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could +not help saying: + +How lovely you are, Lois! And youre all dressed up, too; do you expect +anyone? + +Only Justin, said Lois. + +Only Justin! The words brought an exquisite joy with themonly +Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour +now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was +often lateStill he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two +women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterwards, an +unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop; Lois, divested of her +rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and +soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help +unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an +interval of quiet she went up again, to find Lois at last lying down. + +Its eleven oclock, Lois; I think Ill go to bed. Shall I leave the +gas burning down-stairs? + +Yes, please do; he cant get anything now but the last train out. + +And you dont want me to stay here with you? + +Nooh, no. + +As once before, Lois waited for that trainyet how differently! If that +injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word, +she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed +itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity +herselfshe would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that +way. + +The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, as she got up and +sat by the window, looking out from behind the curtain, her beautiful +braided hair over one shoulder. The last train came in, the people from +it, in twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. He +must have missed that last train outof course he must have missed it! + +We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; the amount of +worry more or less willingly indulged in by uncontrolled minds seems +at times enough to swamp the understanding. Yet there is a foreboding, +unsought, unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be +counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed quality of +truth. + +Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE + + +And you havent heard _anything_ of him yet? + +Not yet, Mrs. Alexander. Im sorryoh, so sorryto have nothing more +to tell you. But Im sure well hear something before morning. + +Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly on +Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little hallway, looking up at +him, with Dosia behind her. This was the third night since that one when +Justin had failed to appear, and there had been no word from him in the +interim. Owing to that curious way that women have of waiting for events +to happen that will end suspense, rather than seeking to end it by any +unaccustomed action of their own, no inquiry had been made at the +Typometer Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which had +been passed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing +him walk in. However, nobody at the company knew anything of Justins +movements, except that he had left the office rather early the afternoon +before, and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It was presumable +that he had been called suddenly out of town, and had sent some word to +Mrs. Alexander that had miscarried. + +That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who was evidently +disquieted, though bluffly and rather irritatingly making light of her +fears; he seemed to be both a little reluctant and a little +contemptuous. + +My dear Mrs. Alexander, you cant expect a fellow to be always tied to +his wifes apron-strings! He doesnt tell you everything. We like to +have a free foot once in a while. Why, my wifes glad when I get off for +a day or twocoaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything +happening to Alexanderwell, an able-bodied man can look out for +himself every time; theres nothing in the world to be anxious about. +Hes meant to wire to you and forgotten to do it, thats allI forgot +it myself last year, when I was called away suddenly, but Myra didnt +turn a hair; she knew I was all right. And if I were you, Mrs. +Alexander,this is just a tip,I wouldnt go around telling _everyone_ +that hes gone off and you dont know where he is. Its the kind of +thing folks get talking about in all kinds of ways; his affairs arent +in any too good shape, as he may have told you. + +Isnt the business all right? queried Lois, with a puzzled fear. + +Oh, yes, of courseall right; butI wouldnt go around wondering +about his being away; hes got his own reasons. You havent a telephone, +have you? Ill send around word to have one put in to-day. Ill tell you +what, Ill ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the +quiethes got lots of wires he can pull. You wont need me any more. + +Leverichs meeting with Dosia had been characterized on his part by a +show of brusque uninterest; he seemed to her indefinably lowered and +coarsened in some wayhis cheeks sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant +admission that he must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. +And Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits +from him, caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her, she +ought not to let that fact be defaced, but everything connected with +that time seemed to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of +horror. All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an +undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women +tenfold greater when he was gone. + +Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had +seen him both times; he had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy, +and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for +details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs. +Alexander, but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day +he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly +nothing in Dosias quietly impersonal attitude to call it forth. Her +face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for +anyone to seepoor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her womans +lesson of concealment. + +But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his +sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have +affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, and with a +hundred lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the +tortured wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of +his being entirely one with her in its absorptionof there being no +other interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justins return. +When Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be +set at rest; during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were +swept away, everything was on the right train, word would arrive from +Justin at once; and when he left, all was black and terrible again. + +The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these strange days when +mamma never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made +merry for them, and saw to the household, which was dependent on the +service of a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to put +her young arms around Lois and hold her close with aching pity. + +The suspense of these days had changed Lois terriblyher cheeks were +hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes looked twice their natural size, +with the black circles below them. Only the knowledge that her babys +welfareperhaps his lifedepended on her, kept her from giving way +entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack of croup, +which necessitated a visit from the doctor and further anxiety. Toward +afternoon of this third day a man came to put in the telephone, which +set them in touch with the unseen world. Girards voice over it later +had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate ending of the +mystery. + +Everything was excitementdelicacies were bought, in case Justin might +like them, Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best to see +dear papa, and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired +result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated +promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as soon as he +got in. + +Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in the suddenly +sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, at Girards word that nothing +more had been heard, as she was still looking up at him everything +turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little +spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head +pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard +leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and +contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as +if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion; she looked up at +Girard and tried to smile with piteous, brimming eyes. + +Ah, dont! he said, with a quick gesture. His voice had an odd sound, +as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with it mingled also a compassionate +tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his +whole attitude as he bent over her. + +Youre very good to be so sorry for me, she whispered. + +He made a swift gesture of protest. Theres one thing I cant standto +see a woman suffer. + +She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him +to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she +were trying to concentrate her mind: + +You have known sorrow? + +Yes. + +Tell me. + +He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of +another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both +spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn +to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there +in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped +loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere +beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a +spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. In such +moments as these she prayed for Lawson. + +Iit was Girard who spoke at lastmy motherCater said once that +hed told you something about me. + +Yes, I remember. + +Its hard to talk about it, yet sometimes I feel as if Id like to. You +see, I was so little when we drifted off, she and I. I didnt know how +to help, how to save her anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since +that I ought to have knownI ought to have known! His hands clenched, +his voice had subsided to a groan. + +You were her comfort when you least thought it, said Lois. + +Perhaps; Ive always hoped so, in my saner moments. No matter how I +should try I could never tell anyone what that time was really like. It +seems now as if we were wandering for years, but I dont suppose it was +for so very long. We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at +night, always trying to keep away from people, whenshe thought we were +going back to our old home in the South, and that they would prevent +us. He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that Ancient +Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a forbidden +subject, probe it to its haunting depths. Did Cater tell you how she +died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in her arms +at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; +and I didnt even have a pillow for her when she was dying; its one of +those things you can never make up forthat you can never change, no +matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to you when +you least expect it. + +Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: But the pain ended +in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to +know that you grieved. + +Yes, I believe that, he acquiesced simply. Im glad you said it now. +I couldnt rest until I got money enough to take her out of her pauper +grave and lay her by the side of her own people at home. + +And you have had a pretty hard time. + +Oh, thats nothing! He squared his shoulders with unconscious rebuttal +of sympathy. When I was a kid, perhapsbut I get a lot of pleasure out +of life. + +But you must be lonely without anyone belonging to you, said Lois, +trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. Wouldnt you be happier if +you were married? + +He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a slight flush that +seemed to come from the embarrassment of some secret thought. The +action, and the change of expression, made him singularly charming. +Possibly; but the chance of that is small. Womenthat is, unmarried +womendont care for my society. + +Oh, oh! protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as she looked at him, of +how much the reverse the truth must be. But if you found the right +woman you might make her care for you. + +He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray eyes. No; there +youre wrong. Id never make any woman care for me, because Id never +want to. If she couldnt care for me without my _making_ her! Id have +to know, when I first looked at her, that she was _mine_. And if she +were not, if she did not care for me herself, Id never want to make +hernever! + +Oh, oh! protested Lois again, with interested amusement, shattered the +next instant as a fragile glass may be shattered by the blow of a +hammer. + +The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, closing the +intervening door behind him. The curtain of anxiety, lifted for +breathing-space for a moment, hung over them again somberly, like a +pall. Where was Justin? + +The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on Girards movements; +his low, murmuring voice told nothing. When he returned to where they +stood, his face was impassive. + +Nothing new; Im just going to town for a couple of hours, thats all. + +Oh, must you leave us? + +Im coming back, if youll let me. He bent over Lois with that earnest +look which seemed somehow to insure protection. I want you to let me +stay down-stairs here all night, if you will; Im going to make +arrangements to get a special message through, no matter what time it +comes, and Ill sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you and +Miss Linden can sleep. + +Oh, Id be so glad to have you here! Redge has that croupy cough again. +But you cant sit up, said Lois. + +Why not? Its luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of +books around. Ill be back in a couple of hours without fail. + +A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could +have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he +gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, +who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the +typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated +man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a +decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his +body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of +being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely +at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and +handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating +himself. + +Thank you very much, said Lois. This is the money, I suppose. Im +sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself, I thought you +might send me a check. + +Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. Thats the +trouble, Mrs. Alexander, we cant send any checks, Mr. Alexander is the +one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexanders name. I went to Mr. +Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things, but +he doesnt seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us +out easily enough if he wanted to. Itheres no use keeping it back, +Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay +away. He ought to be home. + +Why, yes, said Lois. + +Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant +position. Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his +gaze on the ground. The business requires the most particular +management at the momentthe most particular. I He raised his eyes +with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that +this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth +by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the +daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at +Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she +didknew him, perhaps, in a sense, better. + +He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: Mrs. Alexander, your +husband and I have worked together for a year and a half now, with never +a word between us. Im ready to swear by him any moment, if Ive got him +to swear by. Ill back him up in anything, no matter what, if its his +say-soweve pulled through a good many tight places. But I cant do it +alone; its madness to try. If he doesnt show up, Id better close the +place down at once. + +Why do you say this to me? asked Lois, shrinking a little. + +Why? because,Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to mince words; if you +know where your husband is, for Gods sake, get word to him to come +backevery minute is precious. He may be illHeaven knows he had +enough to make him so; my wife knows the strain Ive been through, she +says she wonders Im alive,but he cant look after his health now. If +hes on top of ground, hes got to _come_. Ive put every cent I own +into this business. I havent drawn my whole salary, even, for months. I +dont know what reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustnt +give out now. + +Mr. Harker! cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, who had come +forward. What does he mean? + +She doesnt know where her husband is, said the girl convincingly. Her +eyes and Mr. Harkers met. The somber eagerness faded out of his; he +sighed and rose. + +Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think Ill hurry to catch +the next train; I havent been home to my dinner yet. + +Wont you have something here before you go? asked Lois. Its so +late. + +Oh, thats nothing, Im used to it, returned Mr. Harker, with a pale +smile and the passive, self-effacing business manner as he departed, +while Lois went up-stairs once more. The baby cried, and she soothed +him, holding the warm little form close, closer to hersomething +tangible before she put him down again to step back into this strange +void where Justin was not. + +For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the +existence of a world beyond her kena world that had been Justins. New +as the visitors words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of +herculean struggle; the way this man had lookedhis wife had wondered +that he was still alive. And Justinwhere was he now? _She_ had not +noticed, she had not wondereduntil lately. + +Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her help, it was the one +thing now that kept her reason firm. She knew that she had not been all +unfaithful; sometimes he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she +was near. She had suffered, too, _she_ had longed for his help and +sympathy. No, she would not think of _that_; she would not! When two are +separated, one must love enough to bridge the gulfwhat matter which +one? It seemed now as if there were so much that she might have given, +as if all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might have +been poured out and poured out at his feetlavished on him, without +regard to need or fitness or expense, as Mary lavished her precious box +of spikenard on One she loved. Now that he was gone, there could be +nothing too hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to +have said to him. + +Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him hoarsely to be still; +and then, suddenly conscience-stricken and fearful at the slighting of +this other demand of love,what awful reprisal might it not exact from +her?she went to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy +that Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother would +stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the grinding and +destroying wheel of thought had her bound to it once more. + +He could not have left her of his own will! If he did not come, it would +be because he was deadand then he could never know, never, never know. +There would be nothing left to her but the place where he had been. She +looked at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them for +the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and fell on her +knees, and went on them around the room, dragging herself from chair to +sofa, from sofa to bed,these were the Stations of the Cross that she +was making,with sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying +with them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the Almighty. +Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought of her; on this +tablehereand hereand here his head had lain. Her tears ceased; she +buried her face in the pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was, +in this world or another. For he was her husbandwhere he was she must +be, either in body or in spirit. + +The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice at the other +end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it seemed; withholding +information from any other. The doctor rang up, in response to an +earlier call, with directions for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been +laid down when the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the +ringing of bells! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO + + +This time, of course, the visitor was Mrs. Snow. In any exigency, any +mind- and body-absorbing event of life, the inopportune presence of Mrs. +Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came always as one of +those exasperating recurrences which bring with them a ridiculously +fresh irritation each time. It seemed to be the one extra thing you +couldnt stand; in either trouble or joy she affected you like a +clinging, ankle-flapping mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to +Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the +greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those +passion-depths of darkness so that Mrs. Snow wouldnt suspect anything. +She had an uncanny faculty of divining just what you didnt want her to. + +Once before Lois had suspended tragedy for Mrs. Snow. The same things +happen to us over and over again daily in our crowded yet restricted +livesit is we who change in our meeting with them. We have our great +passions, our great joys, our heartbreaks, no matter how small our +environment. + +How do you do, my dear? Mr. Girard has just told me that he was going +to stay here to-night, in Mr. Alexanders absence. He said little Redge +was threatened with the croup. Now, if I had only known that Mr. +Alexander was away, _I_ could have come and stayed with you! + +Oh, that wasnt at all necessary, said Lois hastily. Thank you very +much. Do sit down, wont you, Mrs. Snow? + +Only for a minute, then; I must go back to Bertha, said Mrs. Snow, +seating herself and fumbling for something under her cloak. I just came +over to read you a letter. Its in my bagI cant seem to find it. +Well, perhaps Id better rest for a minute. Mrs. Snows face looked +unusually lined and set; in spite of her plaintiveness, her eyes had a +harassed glitter. + +Isnt it rather late for you to be out alone? asked Lois. + +Yes; Ada would have come around here with me, but she was expecting Mr. +Sutton. She was expecting him last night, but he didnt come. If _I_ +were a young lady, Id let a gentleman wait for _me_ the next time; it +used to be thought more attractive, in my day, but Adas so afraid of +not seeming cordial; gentlemen seem to be so sensitive nowadays! I said +to her, Ada, when a man is enough at home in a house to kick the cat, +and ask for cake whenever he feels like it, I do _not_ see that it is +necessary to stand on ceremony with him. But Ada thinks differently. + +It is difficult to make rules, said Lois vaguely. + +Yes, sighed Mrs. Snow. As I was saying to Bertha, you dont find a +young man like Mr. Girard so considerate of everyonenot that hes so +_very_ young, either; Im sure he often appears much older than he is. +Its his mannerhe has a manner like my dear father. He and Bertha have +long chats together; really, he is what _I_ would call quite attentive, +though she wont hear of such a thingbut sometimes young men _do_ take +a great fancy for older girls. I had a friend who married a gentleman +twenty-seven years youngerhe died soon afterwards. But many people +think nothing of a little difference of twelve or fifteen years. I said +to Bertha this morning, Bertha, if youd dress yourself a little +youngerif youd only wear a blue bow in your hair. But no; I cant +say anything nowadays to my own children without being flown at! Mrs. +Snows voice trembled. If my darling William were here! + +Have you heard from William lately? asked Lois, with supreme effort. + +My dear, hes in Chicago. I came over to read you a letter from him +that I got to-night. That new postman left it at the Scovels, by +mistake, and they never sent it over until a little while ago. There was +a sentence in it, Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, that I thought +youd like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. Next month I hope to be +able to send you moreno, no, thats not it. When my socks get holes +in them I throw themthats not it, either. Oh! he says, I caught a +glimpse of Mr. Alexander last night, getting on a West Side carthis +was written yesterday morning. I called to him, but too late. Im +sorry, for Id like to have seen him. Thats all, but Mr. Girard seemed +so pleased with the letter, I promised that I would bring it around to +you that very minute,_he_ had to run for the train,but I was +detained. He thought youd like to hear that William had seen Mr. +Alexander. + +Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois faint. Yet, after +Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions began to repeat themselves +again. Justin was aliveJustin was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive +now? And why had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no word? +The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. Every fear that +imagination could devise seemed to center around this new fact. + +She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little drawing-room, +making it ready for Girards occupancypulling out a big chair for his +use, and putting fresh books on the table. The maid had long ago gone to +bed, and there was coffee to be made for himhe might get hungry in the +night. When he came in at last, he brought all the brightness and +courage of hope with him; he had wired to William, he had phoned to a +dozen different places in Chicago. + +Oh, what should we do without you? breathed Lois, her foot on the +stairway. + +It doesnt seem to me Ive helped you very much so far, our one clue +has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. +Alexander; take all the rest you can. Im here to do the watching. If +theres anything really to tell, Ill call you, I promise faithfully. +What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me? + +There was a message for you while you were gone, said Dosia in a low +tone. + +His eyes assented. Yes, I went thereto the place that theybut it +wasnt Alexander, Im glad to say, though I was afraid when I went +in + +I know, said Dosia. + +Another strange night had begun, with the master of the house away. Lois +went to her room to lie down clothed, jumping up to come to the head of +the stairs whenever the telephone-bell rang, and then going back again +when she found that those who were consulting were asking for +information instead of giving it, but by and by the messages ceased. + +Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that he had been gone +for years, and tried confusedly to plan out the future. There were the +childrenhow should she support them? She must support them. It was +hard to get work when you had a baby. If she hadnt the babyno one +should take the baby from her! She clasped him to her for a moment in +terror, as if she were being hunted, before she grew calm and began +planning again. There was only a little money leftto-morrow they must +still eat. She must make the money last. + +Dosia, on the bed by Redges crib, went softly after a while into the +other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could +not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, +so far removed was he from her dream of him; through all his softness, +his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else +didthough Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it toothat +the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up +from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening +streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of +divination, that in spite of all his strong, capable dealing with +actualities and his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of +his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theorytheory +that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry +for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to +her. + +Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired +eyes wide open, close to Redges crib, with his little hot hand clinging +to hers, the mere fact of Girards bodily presence in the house, +down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldnt get +away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it +called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with +Lawsonunless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. +This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not +to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She +tried to lose it in the thought of Lois great trouble, of this +weighting, pitiful mystery of Justins absenceof what it meant to him +and to the household; she tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, +with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing +availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness +of Girards bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so +that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice +spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly: + +Dosia? + +Yes, Lois, dearest, Im here. + +Has any word come from Justin? + +No. + +Lois shivered. I think, when Redge wakes up next, youd better give him +a drink of water, he sounds so hoarse. Ive used all I brought up. Do +you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I cant +slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher. + +Yes, said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly +over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall. + +It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. Dosia went down +the low, wide stairs with that indescribable air of the watcher in the +night. Her white cotton gown, the same that she had worn throughout the +afternoon, had lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted +folds; the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white +necktie was half untied. One cheek was warm where it had pressed the +pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half loosened, hung against +it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a rayed starriness, the pupils +contracted from the sudden lighther expression, tired and half +bewildered, had in it somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in +the unwonted middle of the night, who might go naturally and comfortably +into any kind arms held out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her +fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat +leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on +the arm of it and his head on his hand; the books and bric--brac on the +table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray +containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some +biscuits; a newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the +light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect +which belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, when the +very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment from the life +of the day. Yet, in the midst of this night silence, this withdrawing of +the ordinary vital forces, the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be +extraordinarily instinct with vitality, even in that second before he +moved; his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with such +intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, as instantly +arresting, as the blast of a trumpet. + +At the sound of Dosias light oncoming step opposite the door, he rose +at once, and with a quick stride stood beside her. He seemed tall and +unexpectedly dazzling as he confronted her; his deep set gray eyes were +very brilliant. + +What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill? + +Nooh, no; the children have been restless, that is all, said Dosia, +recovering, with annoyed self-possession, from a momentary shock, and +feeling disagreeably conscious of looking tumbled and forlorn. I came +down to get a pitcher of water. + +Cant I get it in the dining-room for you? he asked, with formal +politeness. + +Thank you. The water isnt running in the butlers pantry, I have to go +in the kitchen for it. If you would light the gas there for me + +Yes, certainly, he responded promptly, pushing the portires aside to +make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light +the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed +floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in +which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as +of the deep darkness of the night outside around everything. + +A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a chair by the +chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its yellow eyes toward the +two intruders. + +Let me fill this, said Girard, taking the pitcher from hera rather +large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted vine for a handleand +carrying it over to the faucet. The intimacy of the hour and the scene +emphasized the more the punctilious aloofness of this enforced +companionship. + +Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the water run, that it +might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a +drumhead. The momentit was hardly moreseemed interminable to Dosia. +The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, +and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways that +her cheek might touch him in recognition. Some inner thought claimed +her, to the exclusion of the present; her eyes, looking dreamily before +her, took on that expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably +sweet. + +Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident that to +caress, to _touch_ her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of +any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair, +the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet +rounded form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as +inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with +always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated, +ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse +to come. + +The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She +raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color +flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was +nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came +toward her with the pitcher. + +Ill take it now, please, she said hurriedly. + +Wont you let me carry it up for you? + +Thank you, it isnt necessary. Ill go along, if youll wait and turn +out the light. + +Very well. Youre sure its not too heavy for you? he asked anxiously, +as her wrists bent a little with the weight. + +Oh, no, indeed, said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the +white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself +against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly. + +Take care! cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight +hold of it. + +Their hands touchedfor the first time since the night of disaster, the +night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a +crashthe fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water +streaming over it in rivulets. + +Dosia! called the frightened voice of Lois from above. + +Yes, Im coming, Dosia called back. Theres nothing the matter! She +had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, +snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she +passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace +with her beating heart. + +When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the +tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago. + +[Illustration: _He came toward her with the pitcher_] + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE + + +Justin was in Chicago,the fact was verified, and he would start for +home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting +one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate +relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon +her, all the more clingingly each time, not to be fully dissipated, +after all, until Justins bodily return. + +Girard had gone back very early to the Snows to breakfast. He talked to +Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, +wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went +about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night +before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something +else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; onceso far away that +night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that +protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange +resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude +to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately +revered, and which other men had not always used toward her. + +Oh, hes _good_, hes good! she whispered to herself, with the tears +blinding her, as she picked up Redges blocks from the floor. She felt +Lawsons kisses on her lips, her throatthat cross of shame that she +held always close to her; George Suttons fat face thrust itself +leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to +which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can +feel! Yet the sense of Girards presence before was as nothing to her +sense of it nowit blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in +the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the quiet attitude +filled intensely with life; the turn of his head, the shape of his hand, +were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, +long-limbed, erect of mien. She sawIf she looked pale and inert, it +was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was +worn out with it. + +Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare +word that he had started home. Lois was not expecting him until nine +oclock on the second morning, the early trains from town were coming +out at inconvenient intervals, but just as Lois had finished dressing, +she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for +fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again. + +Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she +entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. Justin! + +He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for +a moment, and then said, Youd better sit down. + +But, Justinoh, my dearest, how ill you look! She clung to him. +Where have you been? Why didnt you send me any word? + +Ive been to Chicago. + +Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go? + +I dont know. + +You dont _know_? + +Lois, will you give me some coffee? + +She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat while he took a +swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the newspaper. At last she +said: + +Arent you going to tell me any more? + +There isnt any more to tell. Theres no use talking about it. I +believe I had some idea of selling the island when I went to Chicago, +but I dont know how I got there. I didnt know I was there until I woke +up two nights ago at a little hotel away out on the West Side; Billy +pounded on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for +twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I dont want to +speak of it again, Lois; it wasnt a particularly pleasant thing to +happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in the rest of the breakfast? I must +catch the eight-thirty train back into town. I ought to have stopped +there, but I thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where +are the children? + +They are coming down now with Dosia, said his wife, helping Mary with +the dishes, as the patter of little feet sounded in the hall. Redge ran +up to his father, hitting him jubilantly with a small stick which he +held in his chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon him at +once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted over her little +white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched for her, and stood there +leaning against Daddys side, while he ate and drank hurriedly, with +only one hand at his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of +jealousy at being shut out, but she heroically smothered the feeling. + +Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money, +she ventured at last. + +That was all right. + +And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that nightuntil your +message came. + +I hope you havent been talking about this all over the place. + +Nooh, no, said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless +injury. Mr. Leverichhe was here one morningsaid it was best not to. +He was rather unpleasant, though. But nobody knows about your being away +at all. Youre not going now, Justinwithout even seeing baby? + +Ill see him to-night when I come home, said Justin, rising. He kissed +the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, +standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the +hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something +else. + +Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for, she said. + +Yes, thank you. He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing +her for the first time, with a whispered Poor girl! That momentary +close embrace brought her a neededoh, so needed!crumb of comfort. +She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly +thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond. + +But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had +been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with +Justins return, but it had not endedin some sad, weighting fashion it +seemed to have just begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never +to hear any more? + +That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitorWilliam +Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of Williams, but he had an +indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his +clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, +shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was +talking to Loishis avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear +out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight +as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands to cry, +Oh, Billy, Billy, Im so glad to see you! I am so gladI cant tell +you how glad I am! + +All right, Sweetness, youre not going to lose me again, said William +encouragingly. My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western +girls. Cant we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to +marry me before we talk any more. + +Yes, do, said Dosia, dimpling. + +It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take +refuge from all disconcerting thoughtsand from the new embarrassment +of Girards presencewith Billy in the corner of the other room, where +she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of +her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the +gloom. + +Oh, but youve grown pretty! he said, his hands clasped over his +knees, gazing at her. Thats right, get pinkit makes you prettier. I +like this slimpsy sort of dress youve got on; I like that black velvet +around your throat; Ihave you missed me much? + +No, said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. Ive hardly thought of you +at all. But I feel now as if I had. + +Billy nodded. All right, Ill pay you up for that some day. Oh, Dosia, +you may think Im joking, but Im not! There have been days and nights +when Ive done nothing but plan the things I was going to do and say to +make you care for mebut theyre all gone the moment I lay eyes on you. +Ill talk of whatever you like afterwards, but Ive got to say +first,Billys voice, deep and manly and confident, had yet a little +shake in it,that nobody is going to marry you but me, and dont you +forget it. Im no kid any more. Something in his tone gave his words +emphasis. I know how to look out for you better than anyone else does. + +Dear Billy, said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek momentarily +against the rough sleeve of his coat, its so good to have you back +again. + +Im no kid any more, said William warningly. + +Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening to come, so +that she could be alone with her husband, sat in the drawing-room, +trying to sew with nervous, trembling fingers, while her husband, +looking frightfully tired, and Bailey Girard smoked and talkedof all +things in the world!of the relative merits of live bait or spoon +bait in trolling, and afterwards went minutely into details of the +manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout. + +Those waste social hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, that must +be lived through before one can get to the place just ahead of themhow +long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois face twitched, as well +as her fingers; Girards voice, lucidly expressionless, went on and on +in reminiscent detail, and Justin, looking frightfully tired, but +apparently deeply interested, remembered and remembered the day they +caught this, and the way they landed that and, with exasperating +monotony, drew diagrams corroboratingly with two fingers on the table +beside him. She did not realize, as women do not, that to Justin this +conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or +his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at +a necessary air-hole. + +After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing +but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, +but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He +had thought, from Justins manner to-day, that he was to know something +of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him, that was +all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of +his business, anyway. + +Suddenly a word in the fishing conversation caught the ears of the two +who were sitting in the dining-room, in a momentary pause. + +That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the +Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that hes dead. + +Lawson! Dosias face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and +then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little +nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her. + +Hadnt you heard before? + +No; what? + +Hes dead. + +Lawson _dead_! Not Lawson? Her dry lips illy formed the words. + +Yes, Dosiadont look like thatdont let them see in there, Girard +is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up +to-night. Lawson died a week ago. + +How? + +Fell from his horse somewhere up in a caonhe was drunk, I reckon. +They found him twenty-four hours afterwards; the superintendent of the +mines wrote to Leverich. Hed tried to keep pretty straight out there, +all but the drinking, I guess that was too much for him. It was the best +thing he could doto dieas Girard says. Girard hates the very sound +of his name. + +Oh, breathed Dosia painfully. + +The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, +and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the +superintendents letter to say that shed miss Mr. Barr dreadful,that +hed get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and the kids, they +thought the world of him. She signed herself, A true mourner, Mrs. +Wilson. + +Lawson was dead! + +Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billys sleeve as at firstsomething +tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had gone far beyond the room, even that +haunting knowledge that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden +subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a dead +bodyLawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, caressing eyes, those +curving, passionate lips, closed forever, the blood oozing from between +his dark locks. Always she had secretly visioned some distant day when, +Lucile-like, she might be near him, helping, though he would not know it +until he lay dying. As ever with poor Dosia, there was that sharp, +unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. Of what avail +her prayers, her belief in him, when he had died thus? Oh, she had not +prayed enough! She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she +had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just a littlehe +had tried to keep pretty straight, all but the drinking; that was too +much for him. + +That covered some resistance in an under-world of which she knew +nothing. Poor Lawson, who had so early lost his chance, whose youth had +been poisoned at the start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and +reveler, part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,once his promised +wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,must always lie too, +buried with him; nothing could undo that. To die so causelessly! But the +miners had chipped in for a resting-place for himthey had cared a +little; he had been kind to a woman and her little childrenthe kids +had thought the world of him; she was a true mourner, Mrs. Wilson. +Dosia imagined him cheeringly cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, +carrying the children from place to place as she had once seen him carry +that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago. + +A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, carrying her to +the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid rehabilitation of the strong, +except in that one moment of denial when he had risen by the might of +his manhood in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues of his +weakness could be hisyet perhaps, in the sight of the God Who pities, +no such small offering, after all! + +Dosia, you didnt really _care_ for him! + +She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyesan enigmatic answer which +Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, +until she got up, and, whispering, I must go, left the room, +unconscious of Girards following gaze. + +I think wed better be getting back, said the latter suddenly, in an +odd voice, rising in the middle of one of Justins sentences as Billy +came straying in to join the group. + +Lois heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of live bait and +reminiscences would be more than she could stand. + +You need some rest, she said gratefully. You have been tired out in +our service. + +Oh, Im not tired at all, he returned shortly. Her work seemed to +catch his eye for the first time, in a desire to change the subject. +What are you making? + +A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt left outhes of +a very jealous disposition, she went on abstractedly. Are you of a +jealous disposition, Mr. Girard? + +I! He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking +account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as +if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt +decision: Yes, I am. + +Dont look so like a pirate, said young Billy, giving him a thump on +the back that sent them both out of the house, laughing, when Lois rose +and went over to Justins side. + +Husband and wife were at last alone. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR + + +In the days that followed, Justin, going away in the morning very early +with a set face, coming home very late in the evening with that set face +still, hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia. Some tremulous +change had affected Dosia; her eyelashes were often mysteriously wet, +though no one saw her weep. + +Justin has so much on his mind. Lois kept repeating the words over and +over, as if she found in them something by which to hold fast. Rich in +beauty as she was, full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and +the pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have no eyes, no +thought for her. That one murmured sentence in the hallway was all her +food to live onhis only personal recognition of her. + +On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his plans to her with a +freedom of confidence unknown before, a confidence which seemed to +presuppose her oneness of interest with him. He had talked exhaustively +about everything but those few days absence; that was a sore that she +must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. She had striven very +hard not to show when she didnt understand, taking her cues for assent +or dissent as he evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, as it +seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The only time +when she broke in on her own account was when he had told her about +Cater, and the defective bars, and Leverichs ultimatum. Here was an +issue that she could comprehend; here her womans instinct rang true. A +man may juggle with that fluctuating line where sharp practice and +honest shrewdness meet, so that he fails to see where one begins and +another ends; but a woman of Lois caliber _knows_. Her Justin, you +wouldnt do that; you wouldnt tell! met with his quick response: No, +I couldnt. + +Oh, I know that, I know that! Im glad, whatever comes, that you +couldnt do it. Id rather be a hundred times poorer than we are! Arent +you glad that you couldnt do it? + +No; I think Im rather sorry, said Justin, with a half-smile. The +peculiar sharpness of the thought that it was between Cater and +Leverichhis friends, Heaven save the mark! that he was being pushed +toward ruin, had not lost any of its edge. + +There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Caters mind toward +Justinan unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an +older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has +come along the same way. Caters kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the +fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the +factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. + +Justin was surprised to find out how much the morning greeting with +Cater, or the occasional lunch-hour together, had meant to him. Cater +and he had mutually understood a great many things. Cater had done +nothing wrong now, except to pull the foothold from under his friends +feet. It was not men who were known to be bad who hurt you when they +were dishonest; it was the _good_ men who slid over that dividing-line, +with apparent unconsciousness that they were on that other, shaming +side. To break an unwritten bond is perhaps worse than to break one +printed and scheduled, because it presupposes a greater faith and trust. +Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldnt smile when he +thought of Caterit weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had +been his friend. + +I am glad that you couldnt do it anyway! said Lois. It wouldnt have +been you if you had! Cant you take a rest now, dear, when _you_ look so +ill? No, no; I didnt mean thatof course you cant! + +A _rest!_ He rose and walked up and down the room. Lois, do you know +that, in some way, Ive got to get that money before the thirteenth? +Those days in Chicagoat the worst time! It makes me wild to think of +the time Ive lost. Im looking out for a partner who will buy out +Leverich and Martin, and weve got a chance yetIll swear we have! But +Lewistons note has got to be paid first; then I can take time to +breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston from whom we might have borrowed +the money, if I had only been here. If we get that we can hold over; if +we dont we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewiston _trusted_ me. +Ive been to several places to-day to men that would be willing enough +to lend the money if they didnt know I needed it. + +George Sutton? hazarded Lois. + +Justins lips curved bitterly. Oh, hes a cur. He had some money +invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, and drew it all out +afterwards! And, after all, I went to him to-day, like a fool! + +Cant you go to Eugene Larue? + +No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he didnt think the +security enough. If he thought so then, it would be worse than useless +now. + +Mr. Girard? + +Theres no use telling things to him, he hasnt any money. Justin +turned a dim eye on her. I tell you, Lois, I havent left a stone +unturned so far, that I could get at. If we could only sell the island! +Girards looking it up for me; there may be a chance of that. There are +lots of chances to be thought out. I dont even know how we keep +running, but we do. Harkers a trump! If I can hold up my end, well be +all right. + +Then go to bed now, said Lois, with a quick dread that gave her +courage. And you must have something to eat firstand to drink, too. +Come, Justin! Do as I say. Her voice had a new firmness in it which he +unconsciously obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in every +limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her one darling comfort, +the source from which she drew a new love as the child drew its life +from her. It was the first time in all her married life that she had +borne the burden of her husbands care, a burden from which she must +seek no solace from him. Yet the thought of him was in itself +solaceher faith in him so strong that she simply knew he must succeed. +A king of men! If only he did not look so badly! + +She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping him well fed, and +ordering everything minutely for his comfort when he came home, aided +and abetted by Dosia. The two women worked as with one thought between +them, as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, with fond +and minute care. Every detail, from the time he went away in the +morning, stooping slightly under the weight of something mysterious and +unseen, was ordered with reference to his homecoming at nightthe +husband and father on whose strength all this helpless little family +hung for their own sustenance. The children were shown him at their +best, and whisked away the moment they got troublesome. + +Lois dressed herself in the colors he had liked. The cloth was laid +immaculately for dinner, although the maid had gone and had not been +replaced, and dainty dishes for him were concocted with delicate +carethe more care, that every penny had to be counted; when Justin +took out that lean pocket-book to give her money, Lois winced. If he +seemed to relish anything he ate, she and Dosia looked at each other +with covert triumph. + +Everything that was done for him had to be done covertly, it was found; +he disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes +he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost +heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the +doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and resta futile +prescription which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that +it was not rest that he needed, but moneymoney, money, the elixir of +life! He looked drawn and haggard and old, despite his nervous energy, +but a sufficient quantity of that magic metal would smooth out those +premature wrinkles, and round out those hollow checks, and give a +cheerful brightness to his eye, and take ten years from his age. + +Both women came to know the days when the prospects for selling the +island looked well or ill, with those telegrams of Girards. Lois poured +out her heart about him to Dosia, her minute anxieties and fears. + +William came around several times to see Dosiahis visit almost +invariably followed by one from Mrs. Snow, to see if her William were +there. For the rest, there were few callers. + +It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could +see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an +invitation to take a ride in the doctors motor, the doctor being a man +who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented +himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy +speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to +the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed +out of it. + +Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he +had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such +strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it +discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it +after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong +with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed +to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite +straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there +were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice Yet it +might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrongthat +he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again +on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down, to get the +baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. +Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to +her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of +his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence. + +Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, +for fear of waking the baby, in his quest for a handkerchief in a +chiffonier drawer. After finding it, he stopped for a moment in front of +her, with that odd, arrested expression once more. + +You dont mind my going out to-night and leaving you? he murmured. +The doctor ought to have asked _you_ to go instead; you need it more +than I. + +Oh, no, no! she hastened to reassure. I dont mind at all, really! +Her eyes gazed up at him limpidly clear, and emptied of self. I have to +run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldnt go, no +matter how much I was asked to. Im only glad that you will have the +distractionyou need it. I hope youll have a lovely time. + +She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two +arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib. From across the hall +she could hear Redge and Zaidee prattling to each other from their beds +with an elfish glee that began to have long waits between its outbursts. + +In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little +discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her +tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and +straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of +mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a +tiny cloak in the half-gloom of her closet, when she heard her husbands +step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him +beside her. + +Whats the matter? she asked, with quick premonition. + +Nothing, nothing at all; we havent started yet. He put one arm around +her, and with the other lifted her face up toward his. I only came back +to tell youHis voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes +that were bent on hers. I cant talk. I cant be as I ought to be, +Lois, until all this is overbutI dont know whats getting into me +lately, you look so beautiful to me that I cant take my eyes off you! I +went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it +was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away +from my lovely wife.% + +Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than +our easily imagined bliss that we can only hide our eyes from it at +first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place +they were visited by angels. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE + + +Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an +absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she +could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all latelythe more +tired she was the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was +like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial +things became unnaturally distinct. So many wakeful nights had she +passed that one seemed to presuppose another, darkness brought, not a +sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there +staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher +had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her +something that it never brought. Lawsons deathGirardBilly, who was +getting a little troublesome latelythe dear little brothers far away, +mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and +through her mind. Her heart was wrung for those two in the house, Justin +and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and +support Dosia; they had had their day. Prayer but wakened her further, +wandering off in desultory thought. If she could only sleep and forget! + +To-night she heard Justins return from the automobile ride; apparently +the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added +to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard +camehe had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the +murmuring of the voices down-stairsGirards sent the blood leaping to +her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment +his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hersher heart stopped +before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an +unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear +him, and that she could not. Why, oh why, had she gone to bed so early +to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a +disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing +and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could +imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, +smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a +few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its +chains. She couldnt get dressed and break in upon their intimate +conferenceor it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably +go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no +longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there +desolately on the top step, in her long night-gown, white as boughs of +May, with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands +clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching +and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into +large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to +listenand to listenand to listen. + +I want to be there, tooI want to be there, too! she whispered, with +quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. +I want to be there, too. Theyre having it allwithout me. And I want +to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they +didnt. They might have called her! All her passion, all her +philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had +only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have +dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer. + +After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, +and a little figure crept outZaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, +looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and +climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly +against Dosias warm young shoulder. + +They woke me up, she said placidly. Did they woke you up, too, Cousin +Dosia? + +Yes, said Dosia, hugging the child close. Some spell was broken. + +Zaidee listened. Papa and mamma talking down-stairs, oh, so-o-o-o +late! Zaidee gave a little wriggle of delight; her eyes gleamed +winkingly. Redge doesnt know, but I do! Who is that with papa and +mamma, Cousin Dosia? Oh, I know! its the lovely manthats what Redge +and me calls him. I wish I was down-stairs, dont you? Cousin Dosia, +dont you wish you were down-stairs? + +Yes, said Dosia again. Hush! some one is coming; youll get sent to +bed again. This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in +the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course. + +[Illustration: _Sat desolately on the top step_] + +Oh, its you, is it? she said. I thought I heard some one talking. +She rested on the post below, looking up. I came to see if youd take +Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give +Justins room to Mr. Girard. + +Is he going to stay? asked Dosia. + +Yes. Its too late for him to disturb the Snows, and hes been +traveling all day; hes dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa +down-stairs, but I wouldnt let him. She was carrying Zaidee, already +half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosias +bed, while Dosia followed her. + +Did he sell the island? asked Dosia. + +Lois shook her head. No. They may really sell it next week, but not +now The woman who was surely going to buy itshes withdrawn; shes +bought a steam-yacht instead. But Mr. Girard says he has hopes of +another purchaser next week. Only that will be too late to save the +business. Of course he doesnt know that, and Justin will not tell +himhe says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from +that ride he looked so well, and now She covered her face with her +hands, before recovering herself. Its time you were both asleep. + +Cant I help you? asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, +No, its not necessary, and went around making arrangements, while +Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last. + +It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had +breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, +who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the +vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, +imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen +in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that +made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girards +glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to +greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand. + +Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped. + +Its half-past nine, said Dosia. + +Half-past _nine!_ He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified +arraignment. What do you mean? His eye fell upon the clock, and +conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. Heavens and +earth, why wasnt I called? On this morning of all others, when every +moments of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked +early. + +I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest, apologized +Dosia. + +Needed the rest! His tone was poignant; he looked outraged, but his +anger was entirely impersonalthere was in it even a sort of boyish +appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too. + +You had better sit down and have some breakfast. + +Oh, _breakfast!_ His gesture deprecated her evident intention. Please +dont. Thank you very much, but I dont want any breakfast; I only want +to get to town. + +There isnt any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit +down and eat, said Dosia firmly. Come out to this little table on the +piazza. She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with +the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him +sternly. Do you take coffee? + +Please dont, please dont cook me anything! Id hate to trouble you. +He seemed so distressed that she relented a little. + +A glass of milk and some fruit, then; youll _have_ to take that. + +Very wellif I must. Cant I get the things myself? + +No. She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her +heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a +glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down +herself by the table afterwards as he ate and drank. He gave her a +sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her +cheeks. + +Im not used to this, he said simply. What is that dress you have +onsilk? + +No, its cotton; do you like it? + +_Very_ much. Oh, please dont get upZaidee wasnt calling you. I +wont eat another mouthful unless you stay just where you areplease! + +Well! said Dosia, with laughing pleasure. + +Besides, Ive been wanting to consult you about the Alexanders, he +went on, leaning across the table toward her, intimately. Its so +beautiful to me to see them together that to feel that theyre in +trouble distresses me beyond words. Youre so near to them both I +thought that perhaps Do you know anything about the real state of +Mr. Alexanders affairs? + +Dosia shook her head. No; only that he is very much worried over them. + +He wanted to sell the island; he sent me off on that business lately. +Hell sell it some time, of course, but I dont know how complicating +the delay is. Hes the kind of man you cant ask; you have to wait until +he tells you. You cant _make_ a person have confidence in you. Wont +you please have some of these strawberries with me? Do! + +No; you must eat them _all_, said Dosia, with charming authority, her +arms before her on the table, elbow-sleeved, white and dimpled, as she +regarded him. He seemed to take up all the corner, against the +background of the green honeysuckle in the fresh morning light. With +that smile upon his face, he seemed extraordinarily masculine and +absorbing, yet appealing, too, inviting of confidence. + +Dosia felt carried out of herself by a sudden heady resolutionor, +rather, not a new resolution, but one that she had had in mind for a +long, long time, before, oh, before she had even known who this man was. +She had planned over and over again how she was to say those words, and +now the time had come. She could not sit here with him in this new, +sweet friendliness without saying them. She had imagined the scene in so +many different ways! When she had gone over it by herself, her cheeks +had flushed, her eyes had shone with the tears in them; the words as she +spoke them had gone deeply, convincingly, from heart to heartor +perhaps, in an assumed, tremulous lightness, the meaning in her impulse +had shown all the clearer to one who understood. For a year and a half +the uttered thought had been the climax to which her dreams had led; it +would have seemed a monstrous, impossible thing that it had not been +reached before. + +She began now in a moments pause, only to find, too late, that all +warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent +dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and +conscious in real life. + +I want to thank you for being so kind to me the night of that accident +on the train coming up from the South. Poor Dosia instantly felt +committed to a mistake. Her eyes fell for a moment on his hand, as it +lay upon the table, with a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers +had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once +pillowed her cheek upon it, and knew that he had seen the look; she +continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality: +I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for +not thanking you before. + +The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him as if in remembrance +of something that hurt. Oh, pray dont mention it, he said, with a +formality that matched hers. It was nothing but what anyone would have +donelittle enough, anyway. + +What happened afterwards she did not know, except that in a few minutes +he had gone. + +She watched him go off down the path with that swift, long, easy step; +watched till the last vestige of the gray suit was out of sighthe had +a fashion of wearing gray!before clearing off the table. Then she went +and sat on the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with +the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet. Justin was fond of +flowers. + +Much has been written about the power of the mind to reproduce minute +details of a scene that has served as the setting for some great +emotion; the pattern of a table-cover or a rug, the flowers in a vase, +the titles of the books, the strain of music being played in the next +roomall stand out, separate and distinct, indelibly imprinted upon the +memory. There is another variety of the same phenomena, seldom commented +on, where an entirely unreal impression of the scene as a whole is left +on the mind by one or two details. To Dosia, sitting there by the little +plot of tulips, the sun was the brilliant sun of July, and those scarlet +tulips a garden wide and far-reaching, an endless vista of flowers, the +blue sky an endless vault above herhigh noon and midsummer, with that +sweet-scented warmth at the busy heart of things, a circle of infinite +life humming in the low grasses, in the almost windless, hardly stirring +air. Warmth and color and life, at high noon, listening close to the +heart of things. + +And Dosia! She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man +until he had shown that he cared for herit was the unmaidenly, +impossible thing. And nowhow beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful +smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men +suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself +made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more +in her whole life, she had thiseven if she never had anything more. +Yet what had she? Nothing and less than nothing. If he had ever thought +of her, if he had ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand +trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had +been a sign and a symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him +aloneif in some way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once +been his, it had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and +yetso unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her +attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which +he might never give way, but it was unalterably thereas it was +unalterably there with her. All that year at home, when she believed she +had not been thinking of him, she really had been thinking of him. We +learn to know each other sometimes in long absences. She began to +perceive in him now a humility and a pride strangely at variance with +each other, and both equally at variance with the bright assurance of +his outer manner. He gave to everyone; he would work early and late for +others, in his yearning sympathy and affection: yet he himself, from the +very intenseness of his desire for it, stood aloof, and drew back from +the insistence of any claim for himself. They might meet a hundred times +and grow no closer; they might grow farther and farther away. + +Dosia felt that other women must have loved himhow could they have +helped it? She had a pang of sorrow for themfor herself it made no +difference. If she had pain for all her life afterwards, she was glad at +this moment that he was worthy to be loved; she need never be ashamed of +loving himhe was good. The word seemed to contain some beautiful +comfort and uplifting. No matter what experience he had passed through +in his struggle with the world, he had held some simple, honorable, +_clean_ quality intact. The Dosia who must always have some heart-warm +dream to live by had it now; for all her life she could love him, pray +for him. She had always thought that to love was to be happy; now she +was to love and be unhappyyet she would not have it otherwise. + +So slight, so young, so lightly dealt with, Dosia had the pathetically +clear insight and the power that comes to those who see, not themselves +alone, their own desires and hopes, but the universe in which they +stand, and view their acts and thoughts in relation to it. She must see +Truth, and be glad, even if it hurt. + +The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed in it. Whether +she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness and days of heartache +afterwards, this joy of loving was enough for her to-daythe joy of +loving him. She saw, in that lovely, brooding thought of him, what that +first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in with it her +knowledge of him now, to make the real man far more imperfect, though +far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved her as she loved him, part of that for +which she had always sought love would have to be foregoneshe could +never come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and pour out to +him all those hopes and fears, those struggles and mistakes and trials +and indignities, the shame and the penitence that had been hers. She +could never talk of Lawsonher past must be forever unshriven and +uncomforted. Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she +could bare her heart in confession; these were the things that touched +him on the raw. He hated the sound of Lawsons name. How many times +had George Suttons face blotted out hers? If he knew _that_! She must +forever be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that _she_ +could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that it never can be +truly one with the beloved, touched her with its sadness, and then +slipped away in the thought of him nownot just the man who was to help +and protect her with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. +His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his forehead +She thought of him with the fond dream-passion of the maiden, that is +often the shyest thing on earth, ready to veil itself and turn and elude +and hide at the first chance that it may be revealed. + +Dosia! Dosia, where are you? + +Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the sky had grown +gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the trouble, all the stress of the +world, seemed to encompass her with that tone in the voice of Lois. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX + + +Justin has come home ill, he was taken with a chill as soon as he got +to town; he drove back in a carriage from the station. I want you to +telephone for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can. +Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up +the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one +who mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what +may be happening. And, Dosia! she arrested the girl as she was +disappearing, I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what +we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the +children. Theyre in the nursery now, but Ill send them down; they had +better play outdoors, where he wont hear them. + +Oh, yes, yes; Ill attend to everything, affirmed Dosia hurriedly, +while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home +because he is not well argues at once the most serious need for the act. +It is the public crossing of the danger zone. + +With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of +something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of +Justins illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness +of her eyes, in the fullness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement +of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery +force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke +of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the +commonplace surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only +Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken +eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to +make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would +go off togetheranything to make him forget, even though the effort +left her breathless afterwards. When she went out of the room and came +back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been, +with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on +the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the +more quickly to go down-town again if the doctor fixed him up, though +now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones. + +There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which +might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr. +Angevin L. Cater. + +I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and +as I had to come out this way on business, I thought Id just drop in +and see if there was anything I could do for him in town, he stated to +Dosia. + +Ill find out, said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word +that Justin would like to see the visitor. + +Cater himself had grown extraordinarily lean and yellow. The fact that +his clothes were new and of a fashionable cut seemed only to make him +the more grotesque. He looked oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile +of greeting appeared to have shrunk alsosomething had gone out of it. + +Well, Cater, you find me down, said Justin, with glittering, cold +cheerfulness. + +I hope not for long, said the visitor. + +Oh, no; but, when I get up, you wont see me going past much longer; +Ill soon be out of the old place. I guess the game is up, as far as Im +concerned. Your end is ahead. + +Mr. Alexander, began Cater, clearing his throat and bending earnestly +toward Justin, who, with the folds of his blue dressing-gown around him, +had the unnatural surroundings of the flowered-chintz-covered bedroom +furniture, and Lois swinging-glassed, mahogany dressing-table with its +silver appointments. The room had already the cleared-up neatness with +which one prepares for illness, with everything irrelevant put away. A +cluster of white tulips was in a thin glass vase on the mantel; the +shades were drawn to an inch, so that an unglaring yet dimly cheerful +light came through them; on the little mahogany stand by Cater there was +a glass of water and a watch, ticking face upward. Caters elbow jostled +into the light table as he turned, and he steadied it before bracing +himself to go on. I hope you aint going to hold it up against me that +I had to make a different business deal from what we proposed; Ive been +thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasnt any written agreement, +you know. + +No, there was no written agreement, assented Justin; there was +nothing to bind you. + +Thats what I said to myself. If there had been, Id a stuck to it, +of course. But a mans got to do the best he can for himself in this +world. + +Has he? asked the sick man, with an enigmatic questioning smile. + +Id be mighty sorry to have anything come between us. I reckon I took a +shine to you the first day I met up with you, continued Cater +helplessly. Id be mighty sorry to think we werent friends. + +Justins brilliant eyes surveyed him serenely. Something sadly humorous, +yet noble and imposing, seemed to emanate from his presence, weak and a +failure though he was. I can be friends with you, but you cant be +friends with me, Cater; it isnt in you to know how, he said. +Good-by. + +Well, good-by, said the other, rising, his long, angular figure +knocking awkwardly against chairs and tables as he went out, leaving +Justin lying there alone, with his head throbbing horribly. Yet, +strangely enough, in spite of it, his mind felt luminously clear, in +that a certain power seemed to have come to hima power of correlating +all the events of the past eighteen months and placing them in their +relative sequence. A certain faiththe candid, boyish, unquestioning +faith in the adequacy of his knowledge of those whom he had called his +friendswas gone; the face of Leverich came to him, brutal in its +unveiled cupidity, showing what other men felt but concealed, yet his +own faith in honor and honesty remained, stronger and higher than ever +before. Nothing, he knew, could take it from him; it was a faith that he +had won from the battle with his own soul. If other so-called material +things had to go, then they had tohe couldnt pay the price, for one! +He saw now that he had been foredoomed from the start. Men who ventured +on a capital controlled by others, hadnt any chance of free movement. + +By to-morrow night that note of Lewistons would be protested, and +thenthe burning pain of failure gripped him in its racking clutches +once more, though he strove to fight it off. He would have to get well +quickly, so as to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to +get bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were successful +were sought for, but men of his age who were not had a pretty hard row +to hoe. + +Lois was long goneprobably she was with the baby. He missed his +handkerchief, and rose and went over, with a swaying unsteadiness, to +his chiffonier drawer in the farther corner to get one. A pistol lying +there in its leather case, as it had done any time this five years, for +a reserve protection against burglars, caught his eyes. He took it out +of its case, examining the little weapon carefully, with his finger on +the trigger, half cocking it, to see if it needed oil. It was a pretty +little toy. Suddenly, as he held it there, leaning against the +chiffonier, his thin white face with its deep black shadows under the +eyes reflected by the high, narrow glass, the four walls faded away from +him, with their familiar objects; his face gleamed whiter and whiter; +the shadows grew blacker; only his eyes stared + +A room, noticed once a year and a half ago, came before him now with a +creeping, all-possessing distinctnessthat loathsome, dreadful room +(long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of +horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his +career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. +He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp, +mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which +he was drawndrawn a little nearer and a little nearer; the thing in +his handdid it move itself? Cold to his touch it moved + +The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, glided up to him. +She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; her lips refused to speak. + +Why, you neednt have been afraid, dear, he said at once, looking at +her with a gentle surprise. Im not a coward, to go and leave you +_that_ way. You need never be afraid of that, Lois. + +No, said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what +made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had +suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justinwhat +strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her +there. + +She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his wants and +getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, and then knelt down +beside him where he lay, putting her arms around him. + +You oughtnt to be doing this for me; I ought to be taking care of +_you_, he said, with a tender self-reproach that seemed to come from a +new, hitherto unknown Justin, who watched her face to see if it showed +fatigue, and counted the steps she took for him. + +The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and came again later. +The last time he looked grave, ordered complete quiet, and left +sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought on by overwork, had evidently +taken a disregarded hold some time before, and must be reckoned with +now. What Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all +things, freedom from care. Freedom from care! + +Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. An impression of +Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room +where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he +dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar +poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it +made one honorable to serve him. + +The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when +Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois +room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At +Dosias entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she +was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately +as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied criticism: + +I dont care what you sayI dont care what anybody says. I cant +stand it any longer, when its _killing_ him! He _cant_ rest unless he +has that money. Am I to just sit down and let my husband die, when hes +in such trouble as this? Is _that_ all I can do? Why, whose trouble is +it? Mine as well as his! If its his responsibility, its mine, +toomine as well as his! + +She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the table, and was +unconscious that it bled. If theres nobody else to get that money for +him, _Ill_ rise up and get it. Hes stood alone long enoughlong +enough! He says there is no help left, but he forgets that theres his +wife! + +Oh, Lois, said Dosia, half weeping. Oh, Lois, what can _you_ do? +There, youve waked the babyhes crying. + +Get me the waist to this skirt and my walking-jacket. No, give me the +baby first; hes hungry. + +She spoke collectedly, bending over the child as she held him to her, +and straightening the folds of the little garments. There, there, dear +little heart, dear little heart, mothers comfortoh, my comfort, my +blessing! Get my things out of the closet now, Dosia, and my gloves from +that drawer, the top one. Oh, and bring me babys cloak and cap, too. I +forgot that I couldnt leave him. I must take him with me. She had sunk +her voice to a low murmur, so as not to disturb the child. + +Where are you going? asked Dosia. + +To Eugene Larue. + +Mr. Larue! + +Yes. Hell let me have the moneyhell understand. He wouldnt let +Justin have it, but hell give it to meif Im not too proud to ask for +it; and Im not too proud. She spoke in a tone the more thrilling for +its enforced calm. There are things a man will do for a woman, when he +wont for a man because then he has to be businesslike; but he doesnt +have to be businesslike to a womanhe can lend to her just because she +needs it. + +Lois! + +Oh, theres many a womanlike mewho always knows, even though she +never acts on the knowledge, that there is some man she could go to for +help, and get it, just because she was _herself_a woman and in +troublejust for that! Dosia, if I go to Eugene Larue myself in +trouble_such_ trouble + +But hes out at Collingswood! said Dosia, bewildered. + +Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, it connects at +Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an hour to get to the place; +Ive looked it up in the time-table. Ill be back here again by ten +oclock. I She stopped with a sudden intense motion of listening, +then put the child from her and ran across the hall to the opposite +room. + +When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: Justins gone to +sleep now. The doctor says he will be under the influence of the +anodynes until morning. Mrs. Bently is in thereI sent for her; she +says shell stay until I get back. Mrs. Bently was a woman of the +plainer class, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. If the +children wake up they wont be afraid with her; but youll be here, +anyway. + +Leave the baby with me, implored Dosia. + +No, I cantsuppose I were detained? _Then_ Id go crazy! He wont be +any bother, hes so little and so light. + +Very well, then; Ill go, too, stated Dosia in desperation. I am not +needed here. You must have some one with you if you have baby! Let me +go, Lois! You _must!_ + +Oh, very well, if you like, responded Lois indifferently. But that the +suggestion was an unconscious relief to her she showed the next moment, +as she gave some directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries and some +biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the baby if it +grew chilly. + +The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be lighted and the gas +turned down, and the new maid impressed with the fact that they would be +back at a little after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After +Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin as he slepthis +head thrown forward a little on the pillow, his right hand clasped, and +his knees bent as one supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois +stooped over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who +sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit. + +Then the two women walked down the street toward the station, Lois +absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia distracted, confused, half +assenting and half dissenting to the expedition. + +Are you sure Mr. Larue will be at Collingswood? she asked anxiously. + +Justin saw him Saturday. He said he was going out there then for the +summer. + +So far it would be all right, then. They had passed the Snows house, +and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of life there; she hesitated, and +then went on. As they got beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked +back, and saw Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza. + +Ill catch up to you in a moment, she said to Lois, and ran back +quickly. + +Miss Bertha! + +Why, Dosia, my dear, I didnt see you; dont speak loud! Miss Berthas +face, her whispering lips, her hands, were trembling with excitement. +Weve been under quite a strain, but its all over nowIm sure I can +tell _you_. Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr. +Sutton has just proposed to Adain the sitting-room. We left them the +parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. Mothers white shawl is in +there, and I havent been able to get it. + +Oh! said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance of the fact. +Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be in later? + +No, not until to-morrow night, said Miss Bertha as blankly, but Dosia +had already gone on. She did not know whether she were relieved or sorry +that Girard was not there. She did not know what she had meant to say to +him, but it had seemed as if she _must_ see him. She caught up to Lois +and the baby in a few steps, and drew back into the station as Billy +passed it. She had felt anxiously as if some one ought to know where +they were going, but not BillyBilly, who was always now either too +melancholy or too joyous, as she rebuffed or relented. + +Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit seemed to be +wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as the darkness that was +gathering around them. Only, when they were at last in the train, she +threw back her veil and smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief +in the smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost +roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness of heart to Dosia. + +He will lend me the money, said Lois, with a grateful, touching +confidence that seemed to shut out every conventional, every worldly +suggestion, and to breathe only of her need and the willingness of a +friend to helpnot alone for the needs sake, but for hers. + +Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see him; his bearded +lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, piercing eyes, were not +attractive to her. The whole thing was very bewildering. + +It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, where they changed +cars for the little branch road that went past Collingswooda signal +station, as the conductor who punched their tickets impressed on Lois. +Haledon itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of people on +the platform continually coming and going under the electric lights. As +Lois and Dosia waited for their train, an automobile dashed up, and a +man and a woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took their +place among those who were waiting for the westbound express. The woman, +large and elegantly gowned, had something familiar in her outline as she +turned to her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair +mustachethe man who lately had been seen everywhere with Mrs. +Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia shrank back into the shadow. +The light struck full athwart the large, full-blown face of Myra as she +turned to the man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly +cognizant, smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar between his +teeth. + +Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shameshe had seen something +that should have been hidden in darkness. They were going off together. +All those whispers about Mrs. Leverich had been true. + +There were only a few people in the shaky, rattling little car when Lois +and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road +with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on +the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor +of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in +his long cloak, slept all the way. It was but seven miles to +Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the +journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station +with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the +ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran after him. + +Mr. Larues place is near here, isnt it? she called. + +Yes, over there to the right, said the youth, pointing down the board +walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, about a quarter of a mile down. +Youll know when you come to the gates. Theyre big iron ones. + +Isnt there any way of riding? + +I guess not, said the youth, and disappeared into the woods on a +bicycle. + +Oh, it will be only a step, said Lois, starting off in the direction +indicated, followed perforce by Dosia with the hand-bag, both walking in +silence. + +The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact daylight +possibility, had been growing gradually a thing of the dark, unknown, +fantastic. A faint remnant of the fading light remained in the west, +vanishing as they looked at it. Above the treetops a pale moon hung +high; there seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that +iron track curved out of sight. + +The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with that strangely +eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big iron gates were reached at +last, showing a long winding drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue +had built a house for his bride, living in it these summers when she was +away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess tacitly before the +world that he was unable to make his wife care for hima darkened, +desolate, lonely life, as dark and as desolate as this house seemed now. +An undefined dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently: + +The walk has not really been very long. Well probably drive back. Its +odd that there are no lights, but perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah, +theres a light! + +Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung on the cornice +aboveit was the moon and not a lamp that had made it. They ascended +the piazza steps; there was no one there. + +There is a knocker at the front door, said Lois. She pounded, and the +noise vibrated terrifyingly through the stillness. At the same instant a +scraping on the gravel walk behind them made them turn. It was the boy +on the bicycle, who, having sped back to them, was wheeling around at +the moment that he might lose no impetus in retracing his way, while he +leaned over to call: + +Mr. Larue aint there. The woman who closed up the house told me he had +a cable from his wife, and he sailed for Europe this afternoon. She +says, do you want the key? + +No, said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared. + +I wish he had waited until we could have asked him some questions, +said Dosia, vexed. Dont lets stay here; its too dark and too +dreadfully lonely under these trees. We had better get back to the +station and wait for the train. + +I suppose so, said Lois drearily. This, then, was the end of her +exaltationfor this she had passionately nerved herself! There was to +be neither the warmth of instant comprehension of her errand, nor the +frank giving of aid when necessity had been pleaded; there was nothing. +She shifted the baby over to the other shoulder, and they retraced their +way, which now seemed familiar and short. There was, at any rate, a +light on a tall pole in front of the little station, although the +station itself was deserted; they seated themselves on the bench under +it to wait. The train was not scheduled for nearly an hour yet. The +watch that Lois carried showed that it was a quarter to nine. + +Oh, if I could only fly back! she groaned. I dont see how I can +waitI dont see how I can wait! Oh, why did I come? + +Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of, said Dosia, with +the terribly self-accusing feeling now that she ought to have prevented +the expedition at the beginning. She got up to go into the little box of +a house, in search of a time-table. As she passed the tall post that +held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper, and read aloud the words +written on it below the date: + + NOTICE + + NO TRAINS WILL RUN ON THIS ROAD TO-NIGHT + AFTER 8.30 P.M., ON ACCOUNT OF REPAIRS + +Dosia and Lois looked at each other with the blankness of despairthe +frantic, forlornly heroic impulse, uncalculating of circumstances, began +to show itself in all its piteous woman-folly. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN + + +Only fifty miles from a great city, the little station seemed like the +typical lodge in a wilderness; as far as one could see up or down the +track, on either side were wooded hills. A vast silence seemed to be +gathering from unseen fastnesses, to halt in this spot. + +There were no houses and no light to be seen anywhere, except that one +swinging on the pole above, and the moon which was just rising. It was, +in fact, one of those places which consist of the far, back-lying acres +of the great country-owners, and which seem to the casual traveler +forgotten or unknown in their extent and apparently primitive condition. +The other railroad, six or seven miles away, went past the country towns +and the faaded mansions and the conventional horticultural grounds of +the possessors of these uncultivated tracts of woodland. + +To the women sitting on the bench, wrapped around by the loneliness and +the intense stillness of the oncoming night, the whole expedition +appeared at last unveiled in all its grim betrayal. While Lois had been +exaltedly imaginative, had resolved so desperately, had acted so +daringly, there had never been, from the inception of the scheme, any +chance that it could succeed. For the first time since Lois had left +home, a wild seething anxiety for Justin possessed her. How could she +have left him? She must go back to him at once! + +Oh, Dosia, we must get home again; we must get home! she cried, +starting up so vehemently that the baby in her arms screamed, startled, +and Lois walked up and down distractedly hushing him, and then, as he +still wailed, sat down once more and bared her white bosom to quiet him, +talking the while in a low tone: We will have to get back; Dosia, we +must start at once. + +We will have to walk to Haledon, said Dosia. + +Yes, yes. Perhaps we may come to some farmhouse where they will let us +have a wagon, or one may pass us on the way and give us a lift. It is +seven miles to Haledonthat isnt very far! I often walked five miles +with Justin before I was married, and a mile or two more is nothing. +There are plenty of trains from Haledon. + +Oh, we can do it easily enough, said Dosia, though her heart was as +lead within her breast. You had better eat some of these biscuits +before we start, she advised, taking them out of the bag; and Lois +munched them obediently, and drank some tepid water from a pitcher which +Dosia had found inside. As she put it back again in its place, she +slipped to the side of the platform and looked down the moon-filled +narrow valley. + +Through all this journey Dosia had carried double thoughts; her voice +called where none might hear. It spoke to far distances now as she +whispered, with hands outspread: + +Oh, _why_ werent you in when I went for you? Why didnt you come and +take care of us, when I needed you so much? Why did you let us go off +this way? You might have known! Why _dont_ you come and take care of +us? Theres no one to take care of us but you! _You_ could! A dry sob +stopped the wordsthe deep, inherent cry of womankind to man for help, +for succor. She stooped over and picked up an oak-leaf that had lain on +the ground since the winter, and pressed it to her bosom, and sent it +fluttering off on a gust of wind down the incline, as if it could indeed +take her message with it, before she went back to Lois. + +After some hesitation as to the path,one led across the rails from +where they were sitting,they finally took that behind the station, +which broadened out into a road that lay along the wooded slope above, +from which they could look down at intervals and see the track below. +One side of that road was bordered by a high wire fencing inclosing +pieces of woodland, sometimes so thick as to be impenetrable, while +along other stretches there would be glimpsed through the trees some +farther open field. To the right toward the railway, there were only +woods and no fencing. + +The two walked off briskly at first, but the road was of a heavy, loose, +shelving soil in which the foot sank at each step; the grass at the edge +was wet with dew and intersected by the ridged, branching roots of +trees; the pace grew, perforce, slower and slower still. They took turns +in carrying the baby, whose small bundled form began to seem as if +weighted with lead. + +Far over on what must have been the other side of the track, they +occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a +little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong +bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they +came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with +fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they +pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of passing any +given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could +never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and +trees. Trees! They became nightmarishly oppressive in those dark, solemn +ranks and groupsthose silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath +them; terror lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the trees, +away into the open, with only the clear sky overhead! If that road to +the house of Eugene Larue had seemed a part of infinity in the dimness +of the unknown, what was this? + +They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosias voice coaxing and +cheering, and then got up to shake the earth out of their shoes and +struggle on once morebending, shivering, leaning against each other +for support; two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection with +other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the universe, as women do +toil, apparently futile of result. + +Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, +clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot bya cheerful +monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation +behind it. Why hadnt they seen it before? Why hadnt they tried to hail +it when they _did_ see? To have had such a chance and lost it! It seemed +to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent thought. Once they were +frightened almost uncontrollably by a group of men approaching with +strange soundsa group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible +when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering, +two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there were +more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and +treesand trees + +Do you suppose well _ever_ get out of here? asked Lois at last, +dully. + +Why, of course; we cant help getting out, if we keep on, said Dosia, +in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone. + +It was she who was helper and guide now. + +Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do +you think we have walked, Dosia? + +It seems so endless, I cant tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon, +said Dosia. Lets sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois +_dear_! She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp grass +for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the +older womans head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child +in her young arms. Oh, Lois, Lois! + +Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came +the murmur of the brook they had passed in the trainso long since, it +seemed! The moon hung higher above now, pouring a flood of light down +through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with +its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something +in the utter relaxation of the attitude and manner began to alarm the +girl. + +Lois, we must go on, she said, with an anxious note in her voice. +Lois! You _mustnt_ give up. We cant stay here! + +Yes, I know, said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk +ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the +shadow-embroidered road over which they had just passed. + +Oh, why _dont_ you come! she whispered again intensely, with +passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up to Lois, took the +child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the +accompaniment of that far-off brook. + +The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, the walls of +trees darker, closer together, though the soil under foot grew firmer. +They had to stop every few minutes to rest. Lois saw ever before her the +one objective pointa dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out +upon the bed, dying, while she could not get there. Hope was crushed +out. Death and ruinthat was the end. + +The end! There are paths one walks along in life that seem only to end +in the barrier of a stone wall, with No thoroughfare written on it; +there is no way beyond. Yet, when one gets close to that insurmountable, +impenetrable barrier, how often there is seen to be some hitherto +unnoticed aperture, some little postern-gate by which one can pass on +into the highroad! + +Hark! said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound of a voice +trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came nearer, while the women stood +terrified. The thing they had both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the +moonlight brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with a +bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future could compare +with this one, that neared them with the seconds, swaying unsteadily +from side to side of the road, as the tipsy voice alternately muttered +and roared the reiterated words: + + For I have come from Pad-dy land, + The landI do adore! + +They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he +passed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seena blotched, +dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own. +They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a +tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly +nearthe pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one saw it through +the lights and shadows under the trees, capless and coatless, with +sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the elbows, and head held forward. +Suddenly the pace slackened, stopped. + +Great _heavens_! said the voice of Bailey Girard. + +Oh, its you, its you! cried Dosia, running to him with an ineffable, +revealing gesture, a lovely motion of her upflinging arms, a passion of +joy in the face upraised to his, that called forth an instantly +flashing, all-embracing light in his. + +In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each of an intimacy that +went back of all words, back of all action. The arms that upheld her +gripped her close to him as one who defends his own as he said tensely: + +That beast ahead, did he touch you? + +Oh, no; he didnt see us. We hid! She tried to explain in hurrying, +disconnected sentences. Ive been longing and _praying_ for you to +come! I tried to let you know before we started, and you werent there. +Lois was half crazy about Justin. Come to her now! She wanted to see Mr. +Larue, and he was gone. Weve walked from Collingswood; we have the baby +with us. + +The _baby_! + +Yes; she couldnt leave him behind. Oh, its been so terrible! If you +had only known! + +Oh, why didnt I? he groaned. I ought to have knownI _ought_ to +have known! I was in that motor that must have passed you; it was just a +chance that I got out to walk. They had reached the place where Lois +sat, and he bent over her tenderly. She smiled into his anxious eyes, +though her poor face was sunken and wan. + +Im glad its you, she whispered. Youll help me to get home! + +Dear Mrs. Alexander! I want to help you to more than that. I want you +to tell me everything. He pressed her hand, and stood looking +irresolutely down the road. + +I could go to Haledon, and send back a carriage for you; its three +miles further on. + +No, no, no! Dont leave us! the accents came in terror from both. We +can walk with you. Only dont leave us! + +Very well; well try it, then. + +He took the warm bundle that was the sleeping child from Lois, saying, +as she half demurred, Its all right; Ive carried em in the +Spanish-American War in Cuba, holding it in one arm, while with the +other he supported Lois. The dragging march began again, Dosia, +stumbling sometimes, trying to keep alongside of him, so that when he +turned his head anxiously to look for her she would be there, to meet +his eyes with hers, bravely scorning fatigue. + +The trees had disappeared now from the side of the road; long, swelling, +wild fields lay on the slopes of the hillside, broken only by solitary +clumps of bushesfields deserted of life, broad resting-places for the +moonlight, which illumined the farthest edge of the scene, although the +moon itself was hidden by the crest of a hill. And as they went on, +slowly perforce, he questioned Lois gently; and she, with simple words, +gradually laid the facts bare. + +Oh, why didnt Alexander tell me all this? he asked pitifully, and she +answered: + +He said it was no use; he said you had no money. + +No; but I can sometimes get it for other people! I could have gone to +Rondell Brothers and got it. + +Rondell Brothers? I thought they were difficult to approach. + +That depends. I was with Rondells boy in Cuba when he had the fever, +and hes always saidbut thats neither here nor there. Apart from +that, theyve had their eye on your husband lately. You cant hide the +quality of a man like him, Mrs. Alexander; it shows in a hundred ways +that he doesnt think of. They have had dealings with him, though he +doesnt know itits been through agents. Mr. Warren, one of their best +men, has, it seems, taken a fancy to him. I shouldnt wonder if theyd +take over the typometer as it stands, and work Alexander in with it. If +Rondell Brothers really take up anyone! Girard did not need to +finish. + +Even Lois and Dosia had heard of Rondell Brothers, the great firm that +was known from one end of the country to the othera commercial house +whose standing was as firm, as unquestioned, as the Bank of England, and +almost as conservative. Apart from this, its reputation was unique. The +house was more than a commercial establishment: it was an institution, +in which for three generations the firm known as Rondell Brothers had +carried on, in the conduct of their businessand carried to high +advantagethe principles of personal honor and honesty and fair +dealing. + +No boy or man of good character, intelligence, and industry was ever +connected with Rondells without its making for his advancement; to get +a position there was to be assured of his future. Their young men stayed +with them, and rose steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from +them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young +firms whom Rondell Brothers had started and made, and whose profit also +afterwards profited them, were more than had ever been counted. They +were never deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their +own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they +exacted the same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other +guaranty than the name of Rondell. + +If Rondell Brothers took Justins affairs in hand! Lois felt a hope that +sent life through her veins. + +Oh, let us hurry home! she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace, +though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while +Dosia slipped a little behind, still trying to keep her place by his +side, so that she might meet his look when he turned to her. + +Youre so tired, he whispered, with a break in his voice, and I cant +help you! and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with +her comforting No, no, no! Im not really tired; her voice thrilled +with life, though her feet stumbled. + +In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far +solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, +they two were so heart-closeso heavenly, so fulfillingly near! + +Once he whispered in a yearning distress, Why are you crying? And she +answered through those welling tears: + +Im only crying because Im so glad youre here! + +After a while there was a sound of wheelswheels! Only a sulky, it +proved to bea mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a +trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the +turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it. + +Youll have to take another passenger, he said, after explaining +matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the +farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six +inches allotted to her. + +She held out her arms hastily. My boy! she said, but it was a voice +that had hope in it once more. + +Oh, yes, I forgot; heres the baby, said Girard, looking curiously at +the bundle before handing it to her. Well meet you at the Haledon +station very soon now; my friends will have left my hat and coat there +for me. + +In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a +bend of the road. + +So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook +again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those +far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was +like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern +and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the +roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, +of absorbing all the life of the scene. + +Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the +first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that +moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the +world from him. + +The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone: + +Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your shoes before we go +on; theyre full of earth. + +She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him while he knelt down +and loosened the bows, and took off the little clumpy low shoes, shaking +them out carefully, and then put them on once more, retying the bows +neatly with long, slowly accomplishing fingers. + +Theyll get full of earth again, she protested, her voice half lost in +the silence. + +Then Ill take them off and shake them out over again. + +He stood up, brushing the sand from his palms, smiling down at her as +she stood up also. Ive always dreamed of doing that, he said simply. +Ive dreamed of taking you in my arms and carrying you off through the +nightas I couldnt that first time! Ive longed so to do it. There +have been times when I couldnt _stand_ it to see you, because you +werent mine. Thenher hands were in his, his dear, protecting hands, +the hands she loved, with their thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming +as well as giving. + +Oh_Dosia!_ he said below his breath. + +As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all that had hurt +love rose up between them, and passed away, forgiven. She foresaw a time +when all her life before he came into it would have dropped out of +remembrance as a tale that is told. And now + +It seemed that he was going to be a very splendid lover! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT + + +The summer was nearly at an enda summer that had brought +rehabilitation to the Typometer Company, yet rehabilitation of a certain +kind, under strict rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally the +same thing, the typometer was now but one factor of trade among a dozen +other patented inventions under the control of Rondell Brothers. + +If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet in Justins +relation to the business which had seemed so inspiringly his own, there +was a larger relation to greater interests, a wider field, a greater +sense of security, and a sense of justice in the change; he felt that he +had much to learn. There was something in him that could not profit +where other men profitedthat could not take advantage when that +advantage meant loss to another. He was not great enough alone to +reconcile the narrowing factors of trade with that warring law within +him. The stumbling of Cater would have been another stumbling-block if +it had not been that one; that for which Leverich, with Martin always +behind him, had chosen Justin first had been the very thing that had +fought against them. + +[Illustration: _He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into +the room_] + +The summer was far spent. Justin had been working hard. It was long +after midnight. Lois slept, but Justin could not; he rose and went into +the adjoining room, and sat down by the open window. The night had been +very close, but now a faint breath stirred from somewhere out of the +darkness. It was just before the dawnJustin looked out into a gloom in +which the darkness of trees wavered uncertainly and brought with it a +vague remembrance. He had done all this before. When? Suddenly he +recollected the night he had sat at this same window, at the beginning +of this terrible journey, and his thoughts and feelings then; his deep +loneliness of soul, the prevision of the pain even of fulfillmentan +endless, endless arid waste, with the welling forth of that black spirit +of evil in his own nature as the only vital thing to bear him secret +companya moment that was wolfish to his better nature. Almost with the +remembrance came the same mood, but only as reflected in the surface of +his saner nature, not arising from it. + +As he gazed, wrapped in self-communing, on the vague formlessness of the +night, it began gradually to dissolve mysteriously, and the outlines of +the trees and the surrounding objects melted into view; a bird sang from +somewhere near by, a heavenly, clear, full-throated call that brought a +shaft of light from across the world, broadening, as the eye leaped to +it, into a great and spreading glory of flame. + +It had rained just before; the drops still hung on bush and tree, and as +the dazzling radiance of the sun touched them every drop also radiated +light, prismatic and scintillatingan almost audibly tinkling joy. So +indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this +sceneas of a mighty light informing the least atom of our tearful +human existencethat the profoundest depths of Justins nature opened +to the illumination. + +In that moment, with calm eyes, and lips firmly pressed together, his +thoughts reached upward; far, far upward. For the first time, he felt in +accordance with something divine and beyondan accordance that seemed +to solve the meaning of life; what had gone and what was to come. All +the hopes, the planning, the seeking and slaving, whatever they +accomplished or did not accomplish, they fashioned us, ourselves. As it +had been, so it still would be. But for what had gone before, he had not +had this hour. + +It was the journey itself that countedthe dear joys by the way, that +come even through suffering and through painthe joy of the red dawn, +of the summer breeze, of the winter sun; the joy of children, the joy of +companionship. + +He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room. + + THE END + + + + + By Mary Stewart Cutting + +THE SUBURBAN WHIRL + + The first story in the book may be properly termed a long story of + married life. It is a wholesome, delicately humorous and pathetic + account of the struggles of a young couple to establish themselves + in the suburbs. With this, three equally charming shorter stories of + the happiest time make up the volume. + + The charm of these stories is that they are about real people in a + real world. _San Francisco Call_. + + _Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + Mrs. Cutting has written a book so typically American that it + should appeal to every American reader who respects the institution + of marriage, and who is honest enough to admit that love is the only + solution of the problem. _New York Globe_. + + _Seventh Edition. Cloth, $1.35_ + +MORE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + As they celebrate true love, not the yearning kind, but the brand + that cherishes and forgets and forgives and strengthens, they should + go with the wedding presents of every June bride. _Cleveland + Leader_. + + _Frontispiece. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP + + Readers who enjoyed the Little Stories of Married Life by this + author will not be disappointed in this new collection.... _New + York Evening Post_. + + _Third Edition. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/37208-8.zip b/37208-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..87326db --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-8.zip diff --git a/37208-h.zip b/37208-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0d4937 --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-h.zip diff --git a/37208-h/37208-h.htm b/37208-h/37208-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2dd318 --- /dev/null +++ b/37208-h/37208-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,15509 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" > +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> + <meta content="The Wayfarers" name="DC.Title"/> + <meta content="Mary Stewart Cutting" name="DC.Creator"/> + <meta content="en" name="DC.Language"/> + <meta content="1908" name="DC.Created"/> + <meta name="generator" content="ppgen (1.19) generated Aug 24, 2011 09:48 AM" /> + <title>The Wayfarers</title> + <style type="text/css"> + body {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%;} + p {margin-top:1ex; margin-bottom:0; text-align:justify;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size:x-small; text-align:right; text-indent:0; + position:absolute; right:2%; padding:1px 3px; font-style:normal; + font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; text-decoration:none; + background-color:inherit; border:1px solid #eee;} + .pncolor {color:silver;} + h1 {text-align:center; font-weight:normal; + font-size:1.4em; margin-top:4em; margin-bottom:2em;} + h2 {text-align:left; font-weight:normal; + font-size:1.2em; margin-top:4em; margin-bottom:2em;} + h3 {text-align:center; font-weight:bold; + font-size:0.9em; margin-top:1.5em; margin-bottom:1em;} + hr.pb {margin:30px 0; width:100%; border:none; border-top:thin dashed silver; clear:both;} + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + .center {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; text-align:center;} + .larger {font-size:larger;} + .smaller {font-size:smaller;} + table.c {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + .caption {font-size: 80%;} + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + div.center>:first-child {margin: .5em auto 0 auto;text-align:center;} + div.center p {margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;} + </style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wayfarers, by Mary Stewart Cutting + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wayfarers + +Author: Mary Stewart Cutting + +Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens + +Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div><a name='ifpc' id='ifpc'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i001' id='i001'></a> +<img src="images/ifpc.jpg" alt="Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome</em></span> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;'>THE WAYFARERS</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p>BY</p> +<p> </p> +<p><span style='font-size:larger;'>MARY STEWART CUTTING</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>AUTHOR OF LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP,</span></p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE, ETC.</span></p> +</div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i002' id='i002'></a> +<img src='images/iemb.jpg' alt='' title=''/><br /> +</div> +<div class='center'> +<p>ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS</p> +<p> </p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>NEW YORK</span></p> +<p>THE McCLURE COMPANY</p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>MCMVIII</span></p> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'><em>Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company</em></span></p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>Published, June, 1908</span></p> +<p><span style='font-size:smaller;'>Copyright, 1907, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Company</span></p> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:larger;'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</span></p> +</div> +<table class='c' summary='loi'> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Her Cousin’s Arms were at Last Around Her in Welcome</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#ifpc'><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>They Both Sat Dreamily Watching the Blue Pinnacle of Flame</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i024'>24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Theodosia</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i034'>34</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Zaidee Watched Dosia with Benignant Satisfaction</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i082'>82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>He Played a Chord or Two More to Her Silence</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i146'>146</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>It was a Look She Knew</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i184'>184</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Like a Pictured Marchioness of Old</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i190'>190</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Somebody Began to Come Down with Hurrying, Stumbling Feet</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i192'>192</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Mr. Sutton Leaned over Dosia with Eyes for Nobody Else</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i230'>230</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Flowers and Children, Children and Flowers</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i238'>238</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>“Never Let Him Come Here Again—Never, Never!”</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i246'>246</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Even Redge Had Been Allowed to Hold Him</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i278'>278</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>After This He Only Appeared in the Village Street Guarded on Either Side by a Female Snow</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i280'>280</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>He Came Toward Her with the Pitcher</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i312'>312</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>Sat Desolately on the Top Step</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i334'>334</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign='top' style='text-align:left; padding-right:1em;'>He Held Out His Arm Unconsciously as Lois Stole into the Room</td><td valign='top' style='text-align:right;'><a href='#i372'>372</a></td></tr> +</table> +<h1>THE WAYFARERS</h1> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3'></a>3</span>CHAPTER ONE</h2> +<p> +There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat +crowded with human beings at a quarter of +six o’clock in the evening, when the great homeward +rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. +At that time, although there are some returning shoppers +and women type-writers and clerks, the larger number of +the passengers are men, sitting in slanting rows to catch +the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an upright +mass at the forward end of the boat. It is noticeable that, +with a few exceptions, those who have gone forth in the +morning distinct individuals, well dressed, freshly shaven, +with clean linen, an animated manner, a brisk step, and an +eager-eyed disposition toward the labors of the day, seem, +as they return at night, to be only component parts of a +shabby crowd in indistinguishable apparel, and worn to a +uniform dullness not only of appearance but of attitude +and expression. The hard day’s work is over, but the rest +is not yet attained. We all know that between the darkness +and the dawn comes the period when vitality is at its +lowest ebb, and in all transition periods there is a subtle +withdrawing of the old force before the new fills its place. +In that temporary collapse in the daily adjustment between +two lives, the business and the domestic, many a man +with overwrought brain and tired body feels that what he +has been looking forward to as a happy rest appears to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4'></a>4</span> +him now momentarily as an unavoidable and wearying need +for further effort. The demand upon him varies in kind, +but it is still there. +</p> +<p> +Men in a mass are neither beautiful nor impressive to +look at in the modern black or sad-colored raiment of +every-day custom, and it is difficult, as the eyes rest on +the faces in these commonplace rows, to realize the space +which love inevitably fills in these lives, so far apart from +romance do they seem, forgetful as we are of the worn +truth that romance is a flowering weed which grows in any +soil. For three fourths of these men some woman waits. +Those dull eyes can gleam, those set lips can kiss; these be +heroes, handsome men, arbiters of destiny! There is positive +grotesqueness in the idea, seen in this obliterating +haze of fatigue that so maliciously dwarfs and slurs. That +man over there with the long upper lip and closed lids has +an episode in his middle-aged existence to match any in the +annals of fiction. That other beside him, short, fat, with +kind eyes and a stubby brown beard, is the sum of all that +is good and beautiful to the wife for whom his homecoming +continues to be the poignant event of the day. +This man with the long, thin face is a modern martyr +working himself to death for his family; this one was in +the newspapers last week in a connection best not remembered. +This one—you would pick him out at once from +among the rest—is to be married to-morrow. This man, +and this, and this, while presently unconscious of the great +law, are still living under it. Not only to youth is the +promise given; it becomes a larger and more vital thing as +the opportunities of life increase, further spreading in its +fostering of good or evil—a thread so deeply interwoven +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5'></a>5</span> +on the under side of the fabric that we forget to look +for it. +</p> +<p> +In every case is a character to be made or marred, not +only by the large molding, but by the infinitesimal touches +of that love whose influence we conventionally limit to +young and unmarried persons—while knowing, whether +we acknowledge it or not, that it is the one eternally +powerful element in life. +</p> +<p> +Even in a far-off reflex action, this is shown on the +ferry-boat in the fact that when one of this blended concourse +of men meets a woman he instantly regains an individuality; +he pulls himself together, his eyes become +bright, his manner concentrated, his clothes set well on +him. He is no longer one of the crowd, but himself. +</p> +<p> +Tireless youth may achieve the same individual effect, +or unusual personal beauty, or great happiness, or the +possession of a dominant idea. A number of people, as +they came forward on the boat, turned to look back at two +men sitting by the narrow passageway, who in the midst of +the general indifference were talking in a low tone, with +obviously intense earnestness. Those who looked once +usually turned a second time to gaze on the face of one. +</p> +<p> +Many a man who has an upright nature and a good +disposition fails to show these facts patently to the casual +observer. To Justin Alexander had been given the grace +of a singularly attractive countenance. He was of a fair +complexion, with light hair, a good nose slightly aquiline, +and a well-shaped mouth and chin; but his charm was irrespective +of feature. No one could look at him and not +know him to be a man of sweet and fine honor. The gaze +of his keen blue eyes—clear, though not very large—carried +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6'></a>6</span> +conviction to whomsoever it rested on that a clean +and honest soul dwelt therein. Although he did not in the +least realize it, this had been one of the greatest factors +in any success that he had ever had, joined as it was to +good judgment and great physical energy. Everyone +liked him, not for what he said or did, but for what he was, +and for the encouragement of his bright glance, which had +a convincing and magnetic quality in it. He talked intelligently +and well, although not a great deal, and among +the many people who were drawn toward him a corresponding +liking on his part was easily inferred. Yet he +was, in fact, innately although dumbly critical; a reticent +man as to his own thoughts and opinions, he took an inward +measurement of persons and circumstances often the +very reverse of what was supposed. This attitude of his +was in no sense of the word hypocritical, it came instead +from a constitutional dislike of voicing his innermost feelings. +It somehow hurt him to acknowledge defects in +others, and he had also an impersonal sense of justice +which allowed for good qualities in those who were uncongenial +to him; he did not really like the man who sat +beside him, and with whom he had the prospect of being +intimately associated, but even his wife had hardly divined +this; certainly Joseph Leverich himself, large, jovial, and +shrewd-eyed, would have been the last to suspect it. +</p> +<p> +“The gist of the matter is this, Alexander,” he was +saying, as he hit one hand heavily with the large forefinger +of the other, “we want a man capable not only of overseeing +the works,—Harker understands that pretty well,—but +of managing the real business of the factory and +representing it with business men; neither Foster nor I +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7'></a>7</span> +can attend to it—Great Scott, I wish we could! We +haven’t the time. We bought the whole outfit a couple of +years ago; it’s only one of twenty other irons we have in +the fire.” +</p> +<p> +“I know that your interests are large,” said Alexander, +as Leverich paused. +</p> +<p> +“The great drawback to having large interests is that +you have to delegate so much of the management to +others. When we took up this, it ran itself, after a fashion; +but since that a dozen other people are making the same +thing—of course, with slight variations, but practically +the same thing. Patents don’t really protect you much. +Now we want our machine pushed; but neither Foster nor +I, for different reasons, can do this. The fact is, we don’t +want to appear at all. And we’ve had our eye on you for +some time.” +</p> +<p> +“This is news to me,” said Alexander. +</p> +<p> +“Now the control of the factory has to be settled suddenly, +out of hand; somebody has got to take hold. So we +make you the offer. We will deposit fifty thousand to your +credit, to be used as working capital—you can’t branch +out with less; you’ve got to be able to work to advantage. +The days have gone when a business could be set going on +a couple of thousand and worked up with industry and +frugality, as the copy-books say, into the millions. Small +concerns nowadays go to the wall—and serve ’em right, I +say; only fools believe in success without money. We’ll +see to your backing! Of course, the interest will be paid +out of the business, you don’t undertake it individually. +At the end of two years more we ought to have a big +thing.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8'></a>8</span> +</p> +<p> +“And if we don’t?” said Alexander. +</p> +<p> +The other’s dim gooseberry eyes suddenly flashed. “If +you think we will not, you are not the man we want—he’s +got to have the courage of his convictions to be worth his +salt. But you can’t put me off this way—I know you. +Take up the project or leave it—I say this, but in reality +you can’t leave it, and you know it. A man doesn’t get a +chance like this twice. Hamilton came to us the other day +for the position, and we refused him, although he had +capital and we wouldn’t have had to advance a cent of the +money we’re willing to put up for you.” +</p> +<p> +“But why are you willing to?” Justin looked with his +bright eyes at the other. +</p> +<p> +“Because you are the man we want!” Leverich leaned +forward eagerly, and shifted his large frame so as to put +each muscle into an easier position. “Don’t let’s go over +that old ground again. You’ve had just the experience in +the old company that we need; but it’s your wide acquaintance +that tells, and it’s that that we’re willing to +buy. We believe you can make a market for our goods.” +</p> +<p> +“It is an important step,” said the other thoughtfully, +“to leave a certainty for an uncertainty—not that I +should regard it as an uncertainty if I took it,” he added, +with a smile. +</p> +<p> +“I know it’s hard to break away and start out for +yourself when you have a family; lots of men go all their +lives in a rut because they haven’t the courage to take the +plunge. But you don’t want to work for somebody else all +your life; you don’t want to feel that you’re wasting all +your best years. By and by it will be too late. And a +growing family takes more money each year, instead of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9'></a>9</span> +less—you’ve got to think of that, too. It’s a terrible thing +to be always cramped, and know there’s no way out of it +in this world.” +</p> +<p> +“You don’t need to tell me all this, Leverich,” said +Justin coolly. +</p> +<p> +“No, I know I don’t; but I want you to realize that +you have your chance now—one in a million. I’m sorry +to hurry you, but you see the way we’re fixed. Say the +word now! Get it off your mind and you’ll sleep easier. I +know what your word is—as good as your bond. <em>I’d</em> take +it! You can give any formal decision later.” +</p> +<p> +Justin still smiled, but he shook his head; though +capable of quick decision when necessary, it was yet impossible +to hurry him; his actions in every case depended +on his own thought, and gained no volition from outside +influences, which might indeed retard but could never compel. +Virtually he had concluded to accept Leverich’s offer, +but he would take his own time about saying so; he felt +the haste of the other man to be somewhat of an offense +against decency. +</p> +<p> +“Well!” Leverich shrugged his heavy shoulders at the +bright impenetrableness that was like a shining armor. +“We said we’d give you until Wednesday, so of course we +will. We will bring the books around to-night anyway, +and go over them, as we planned; you can’t afford to lose +any time. And talk to your wife about it, she’s a sensible +woman—and one who longs, like all the rest of ’em, for +more than she’s got,” he added to himself, with cynical +satisfaction. +</p> +<p> +“Martin is watching us now,” he continued, waving his +hand over toward the other side of the boat, where a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10'></a>10</span> +slight, insignificant-looking man with small features and a +large, bulging forehead lifted his hand in an answering +gesture. “You’d never think, to look at him, that he was +what he is; he has more brains in his little finger than I +have in my whole head.” Leverich spoke with evident +sincerity. “I’m just a plain man of business, but Foster’s +a genius. He fixed on you from the start. Hello, we’re ’most +in already.” +</p> +<p> +The crowd from the rear cabin had begun to push +through the passageway and surge to the front of the +boat, which was still some distance from the dock. The +man next them folded up his paper, and Justin and Leverich +rose mechanically and stood amid the throng, which +became more and more compact every moment. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly both men started as they looked back at the +fresh accessions to the crowd, and pushed sideways, falling +behind a little to get in line with a tall and slender young +woman with pink roses in a black hat, and a dotted veil +that emphasized her rich coloring. She raised her head as +a voice beside her said: +</p> +<p> +“Good evening, Mrs. Alexander!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, is that you, Mr. Leverich? How do you do? I +haven’t met a soul I knew on the boat until this moment, +and now I see six people. Oh, Justin!” She had faced +around as a hand was laid on her arm, and stood looking +up at him with happily surprised eyes, while he smiled +back at her with a slight flush on his own cheek. “I was +looking for you all the time,” she said. +</p> +<p> +The sudden and unexpected meeting of husband and +wife has a singular element in it—it is somewhat like unconsciously +approaching a mirror in which one views a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11'></a>11</span> +stranger who turns out to be one’s self. That swift and impersonal +view gives an impression as a whole that can be +reached in no other way. Lois Alexander noticed at once +that her husband’s clothes needed brushing, and that the +velvet collar of his overcoat was worn at the edges—she +had hardly seen the coat this year except as he was putting +it on or taking it off. It gave her a slight shock to see that +the tired lines around his eyes made his face look older +than she was accustomed to think of it. He, for his part, +experienced the same slight shock in looking at her; he +saw the little imperfections in her face, and the roses in +her hat appeared to him perhaps too pink and girlish. Yet +through all this there was an indescribable thrill of happy +possession and loving admiration of each other, touchingly +sweet, and all the tenderer for the hint of passing +years. Among all the men around, Justin was the king; +among all women, she was the most desirable. +</p> +<p> +After the expected sensations of the usual home greeting +and the accustomed kiss, it gave a spice to intimacy +to meet perforce as strangers. She leaned partly against +him as she talked to Mr. Leverich, and he pressed her arm +with his strong fingers under cover of her cloak and made +the color come and go in her cheek; her eyes mutely implored +him to stop, and he enjoyed her confusion. Husband +and wife looked well together, in a certain vitality of +movement and expression common to both which made +others instinctively turn to observe them. +</p> +<p> +“I have been trying to discover my husband all the way +across,” she complained to Leverich. “I was sure that he +was on this boat. Why didn’t you look out for me, +Justin?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12'></a>12</span> +</p> +<p> +“You didn’t say you were going in town to-day,” he +expostulated. +</p> +<p> +“How often have I told you to look out for me? I am +likely to go in at any time. I had to get some things for +the children. Have you—have you seen anyone to-day?” +She spoke disconnectedly, as conscious as a girl of the disconcerting +pressure on her arm. +</p> +<p> +“No—oh, yes; I saw Eugene Larue this morning, he’s +back from the other side.” +</p> +<p> +“Did he say when he would be out?” +</p> +<p> +“No.” +</p> +<p> +“Did you ask him?” +</p> +<p> +“No. The fact is, Lois, I only saw him for a moment +and I never thought about it.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference. I wanted to speak +to you about Theodosia; I’ve had a letter, and she’s coming. +We are going to have a young lady as a visitor this +winter,” she added formally in explanation to Mr. Leverich, +who still stood at her elbow. “She’s coming up +North to study music; she’s very pretty, I believe, and +clever.” +</p> +<p> +“A relation?” hazarded Mr. Leverich. +</p> +<p> +“Yes; she’s a young cousin of mine—I haven’t seen her +since she was a child. It will be so pleasant to have a girl +in the house.” +</p> +<p> +“You like company,” he returned approvingly, “my +wife does, too; we always have a houseful. She says I show +off better when we have visitors—can’t let my angry passions +rise. By the way, Alexander, what time shall I bring +the books over to-night?” +</p> +<p> +Lois Alexander’s startled, questioning glance sought +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13'></a>13</span> +her husband’s, and his gave a gravely confidential assent +before he answered: +</p> +<p> +“Any time you say.” +</p> +<p> +“Will eight o’clock be too early?” +</p> +<p> +“No, that will suit me very well.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, good-by!” He took off his hat in farewell to +Lois, and disappeared in the crowd, as his broad shoulders +forced a sinuous passage through the throng. +</p> +<p> +“How are the children?” Justin asked his wife. +</p> +<p> +“They’re all right.” She paused, and then said: “If +you are to look over those books, I suppose we can’t go to +the Calenders’ to-night.” +</p> +<p> +“No.” The dark line of the pier struck athwart +the dusky light and divided the windows in two. “At +least, I cannot, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t +go.” +</p> +<p> +“You know that I will not go without you.” +</p> +<p> +“Other women do.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, <em>I</em> will not.” +</p> +<p> +“What a foolish girl!” His tone was fond. “Then—<em>take</em> +care!” The boat had bumped into the dock; in the +struggling press of the stampeding crowd, Lois clung to +her husband’s arm and he strove to ward off the crush +from her. When they were at last over the gang-plank, +joining in the hurrying, straggling procession toward the +train, he looked at her with tender solicitude. +</p> +<p> +“You shouldn’t come out on the boat so late as this. +Was it too much for you?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no, no! I do this alone lots of times.” She felt so +vividly happy that her breathlessness was hardly an annoyance +as they dodged in front of the incoming drays of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14'></a>14</span> +another boat and waved aside the impeding newsboys crying +the evening papers. +</p> +<p> +She foresaw that they would be separated in the train, +and found voice enough to whisper to him: +</p> +<p> +“Are you to decide to-night?” +</p> +<p> +“I have virtually decided now.” +</p> +<p> +“To accept?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> +<p> +Her breath came suddenly; with the monosyllable an +electric wave had set the pulses of both tingling. The +spoken word had not failed of its wonted power; it had at +this moment opened a gate hitherto closed. Both husband +and wife felt their feet at last set on the great highroad +of modern romance, the road to wealth, along which ride +daily, as of old, knights in armor, duly caparisoned, with +shield and spear, bent, not on deeds of chivalry, but on one +glittering quest—a grim pathway, veiled by a golden haze. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15'></a>15</span>CHAPTER TWO</h2> +<p> +It was a mighty hour. Justin, sitting by the open +window with his head upon his hand, looking out into +the night, saw but dimly the pale shining of the +familiar stars, in the search for the rising star of his own +future. It was far on in the small hours, and he had not +yet slept, although he had come up-stairs at twelve o’clock +with the firm intention of undressing and going to bed at +once. He had, instead, dropped down into the wicker chair +in the unlighted sitting-room to think for a few moments—and +a few moments—and a few moments more. +</p> +<p> +The dining-table which he had left was filled with sheets +of paper covered with fine figures, and his mind at first +continually reverted to them, multiplying, subtracting, +and correcting with keen facility, and with infinitesimal +changes in the final result, which he knew, notwithstanding, +could be only approximate, no matter how painstakingly +his fancy strove to render it exact. +</p> +<p> +After a while, however, other thoughts asserted themselves. +The vast influences of the night were around him as +from the deep places of the universe—the depth of dusky +gloom, the depth of silence. The window looked out over +a garden, but in this dusky gloom it had lost the semblance +of earth and seemed, instead, but the under part of an enveloping +cloud in which he was the only breathing human +life. The vague dark branches of the trees waving across +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16'></a>16</span> +the lesser darkness spoke of even deeper mystery in their +mute witness to that breath from the unseen which moved +them. +</p> +<p> +It was not the problem of the universe of which all this +spoke to Justin Alexander, though as such it had been +part and parcel of his questioning youth. The days when +he might have sung with Omar were gone with those speculative +midnight hours, the foregathering with death, the +conscious search for higher meanings, the effort to solve +the unknowable; whatever philosophy was evolved from +those journeys into the dark was labeled and put away on +a remote shelf, where the mind occasionally reverted to it +with a sigh of thoughtful possession, but for which there +was no longer any daily use. There was even a chance that +on bringing the precious package out into the modern +daylight it might be found to have changed its color +entirely. +</p> +<p> +The problem of his own life was what this hour held in +its shifting hold for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines +on which he gazed seemed to prefigure the uncertain +boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a family, +the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, +even though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into +space. +</p> +<p> +The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely +any time for six years back had come at last, +but it had brought with it at this moment a strange and +unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing calculations of +the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with +a new undertaking and eager for power had given place +to a weight of responsibility and foreboding. How much, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17'></a>17</span> +and how much, and yet how much, depended on his efforts! +He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he had succeeded, +what would success bring him individually that he +had not now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? +The toil of years piled up before him, with the +pain of satisfied ambition at the end of it. +</p> +<p> +In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul +stood confessed before him. He yearned at the moment +unutterably, and with a mighty longing, for another to +be as one with that soul in the comprehension of mood and +aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the +deepest sympathy. His wife—she was very sweet, she was +very beloved, but her utmost understanding of this life of +his was the conscious effort of one who lived in an alien +sphere. His children—he loved them fondly, but the responsibility +of their future years weighed upon him; as +long as he could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait +upon him in his rôle of provider—neither in body nor in +spirit could he ever again have the rest of freedom. +</p> +<p> +Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and +in spite of the inner knowledge of true love for the bonds +that held him, a wild desire for the untrammeled liberty of +his boyish days. If he could take his fishing-rod and tramp +off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank under +the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools +of the brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to +look for him or question why, and have neither yesterday +nor to-morrow to hamper him, but only the joy of living! +To saunter back to the house late in the warm afternoon +with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under +his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18'></a>18</span> +tasted after the long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up +with a china cup out of the stone crock on the wooden +bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, careless day! +</p> +<p> +The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew +uppermost in him to escape from civilization and wander +as he would upon the brown earth, without let or hindrance! +In those far-off wilds where men tracked beasts to +their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands +also, and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost +all connection now with his environment. The air that blew +down from the hills and touched his cheek might have +come over the burning desert, or have been freighted with +the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he +sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed +him now. His roaming fancy—— +</p> +<p> +“Are you up still?” +</p> +<p> +Justin started—it was the voice of his wife. He came +back to the familiar region of warm human love with a +glad bound of relief so instantaneous that he had not even +shame for his abnormal wanderings; they became already +as though they had never been as he answered: +</p> +<p> +“Yes; I couldn’t have slept if I had gone to bed.” +</p> +<p> +“But you’re all cold sitting by that window, with the +night air blowing in on you!” +</p> +<p> +Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as +they closed around his neck. +</p> +<p> +“Shut the window at once! You’re so imprudent. You +must remember that it isn’t summer now.” +</p> +<p> +She lent herself to his embrace for a moment. +</p> +<p> +“Do you know how late it is?” +</p> +<p> +“No, and I don’t want to. Let’s sit here together for a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19'></a>19</span> +little while, I’m unspeakably wide awake! I’ll make up a +little fire for a few minutes and we’ll have a midnight +talk.” +</p> +<p> +She laughed with evident pleasure. “Well!” +</p> +<p> +He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down +on the hearth, lighted the small pine logs which were piled +up there. A sudden flame brought into bold relief his +sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he leaned forward—the +light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong +set mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by +him and put out her bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers +to catch the warmth. When he turned, the flame had +caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and wavered +and fell around her. +</p> +<p> +It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent +the parents of even the youngest infant as people +of mature age and didactic wisdom; to be a mother was +to be removed forever from the precincts of social vanities +or young and active living. One can find in the books of +fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, +with banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, +dispensing advice to abnormally small children in trousers +and pinafores who cluster at her knees. Lois Alexander +would have been a revelation to that epoch; with her white +lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her pink-slippered +feet, she might have served as a distinctly +modern illustration of youthful motherhood. +</p> +<p> +She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in +her bearing. Her form was beautifully rounded and her +throat and neck were of a soft whiteness peculiarly their +own. Everything about her was richly colored—her lips, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20'></a>20</span> +her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed starriness +in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as +now, unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. +Her usual expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, +as if she were thinking of herself; but when she smiled she +seemed to think only of you. +</p> +<p> +She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent +forward watching the blaze in a new absorption. +</p> +<p> +“I know you’re thinking of the new venture.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes; it’s a good deal to think of.” +</p> +<p> +“I should say so!” She caught her breath admiringly. +“I listened to you and those men talking to-night until +I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. I should think those +figures would drive you crazy!” +</p> +<p> +“They won’t drive me crazy if I can make them come +out as I wish,” said Justin emphatically. +</p> +<p> +“But I thought it was all settled that you <em>could</em>!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes—on paper. Everything looks all right there—and +it shall be, too! But when you get to working things +out in real life you must allow for differences. I know the +machine is good—I don’t take any chances on that, as I +told you before; but there are new machines put on the +market all the time to compete with; we haven’t a monopoly.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, you can make your prices lower than the +others,” she suggested brightly. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, of course,” he explained with patience, “but +if we put prices too low there’s no profit. We may have to +do it for a while, though; we’ve got to be seen doing +business, even if it’s at a loss. That’s what the fifty thousand’s +for—to tide us over just such a time.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21'></a>21</span> +</p> +<p> +“It is a great deal to have to pay back,” she said +anxiously, leaning forward to throw a small log on the +fire. “I don’t like you to saddle yourself with such a debt. +I don’t like it!” +</p> +<p> +What weighed on him most—the personal care and +responsibility—made no impression on her; she had a loyal +and wifely faith in his large ability; but the thought of +the money, which filled him only with the exhilaration of +sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a woman’s +horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and +legitimate business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace. +</p> +<p> +“I wish you could get along without the money.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m glad enough to have it,” he replied. “Rest assured, +Lois, if they didn’t think me worth it they wouldn’t +lend it to me—they expect big interest on their investment.” +</p> +<p> +“And is our living to come out of it, too?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes—until there’s an income.” +</p> +<p> +“How much will you take?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no fixed sum—just as little as we can get along +with at present. We’ll go slowly, Lois, and economize all +we can, until we get on our feet.” +</p> +<p> +“Indeed, I’ll economize!” She clasped her hands earnestly. +“There are only a few things to be bought first; +things, you know, that we can’t do without. After that +we’ll need next to nothing. This rug, for instance—it’s in +rags, I’m ashamed to bring anyone up here—but that +won’t cost much, and we’ve <em>got</em> to get one for the front +hall; it isn’t decent. And I’ll have to buy the children’s +winter clothing before it gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22'></a>22</span> +coat. She has such long legs, her last year’s coat looks like +a ruffle.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, of course, get what is needed,” said the father +resignedly. “Some money will have to be spent, necessarily, +but make it as little as you can.” +</p> +<p> +She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried +to get back her lost ground. +</p> +<p> +“Ah, don’t let’s leave the fire yet,” she pleaded, as he +made a motion to rise. “I want to sit here a few minutes +more, and it’s going to blaze up so beautifully! It’s so +seldom that we ever really get a chance to talk together. +It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this +way. I’ve hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill—a +man with your capabilities! I knew that if it had +not been for the children and for me you would have left +the place long ago.” +</p> +<p> +“If it were not for the children and for you I might +not be leaving it now,” he answered gently. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know. It’s been dreadfully hard to make both +ends meet lately, I’ve seen how worried you were. Dear, I +don’t want to be a drag; I want to be an inspiration. +Promise to let me help you all I can.” +</p> +<p> +“You always help me.” +</p> +<p> +“Ah, no, I don’t; <em>I</em> feel it, though you may not.” She +paused, and went on again with a tremulous note in her +voice: “Justin, I miss you so much sometimes; there are +days and days when I feel as if I hadn’t seen you at all!” +</p> +<p> +“You see all there is of me,” said Justin tersely. “How +many times a year do I go out of an evening without +you?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23'></a>23</span> +the children and the servants, I think of so many things +that I want to say to you when you come home, and then +you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I don’t get +any chance at all. You <em>never</em> ask me anything, or notice +when I don’t feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I +could hardly sit up, and you never noticed. Do you think, +Justin, that you could feel ill and I not know it?” +</p> +<p> +“No, I suppose not,” said Justin. “But I’m afraid +you’ll have another headache to-morrow if you sit up any +longer, Lois.” +</p> +<p> +“No, I will not!” She tossed her head gayly, and also +tossed away a bright tear that was ready to fall. Her +husband hated to see her cry, it filled him with a cold and +unreasoning wrath at which she blindly wondered but was +forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had broken +up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely. +</p> +<p> +She tried to speak evenly as she said: “I didn’t mean +that to sound as if I were complaining. I think and think +how I can make things—different.” +</p> +<p> +She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink +slippers, nearer to the blaze, and he put his hand over them +protectingly. Although she had been married for nearly +eight years, she had not lost a certain girlish trick of +modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his gaze. +</p> +<p> +It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after +any term of years seemed as though it could be only an +antique and commonplace thing, it still held for them the +essence of novelty; they were only beginning to act in the +great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. +To live one’s own life is a matter of such poignant and +absorbing interest that it insensibly creates an individual +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24'></a>24</span> +atmosphere which obscures the large known phenomena of +nature. +</p> +<p> +Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost +his wife after ten years of wedded happiness, and rather +wondering at the pity bestowed upon him. Ten years! +Why, it seemed like half a century—life must be nearly +over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort +of wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one’s inner limit +of youth lengthened also; even after a decade they might +still think of themselves as young married people with a +future all to come. +</p> +<p> +The tender proprietorship of Justin’s caress was more +comforting to Lois than words. They both sat dreamily +watching the blue pinnacle of flame as they rose from the +red heart of the fire, her arm across his shoulders as he +leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind preoccupied +with divergent claims. +</p> +<p> +The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, +half nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow +of a small household. It was not in the least as Lois +would have liked it to be, but she always felt that it was +only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space +to walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and +the covered box by the window that served both as a seat +and as a receptacle for toys—a doll’s cradle and a horse +on wheels taking up two of the corners by the window. +Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive +stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the +table. The utter domesticity of the room was hardly relieved +by an unframed engraving of the Madonna della +Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a heterogeneous +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25'></a>25</span> +collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a +silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, +more or less the worse for wear, and two colored +lithographs pinned to the wall; one of a horse carrying a +boy on his back, and the other of a bright blue-and-yellow +child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor were picture-books +and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to +speak of the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious +power which the hand of man had wrested ignorantly from +the elements, to burn and leap and soar upon his hearthstone. +</p> +<div><a name='i024' id='i024'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i003' id='i003'></a> +<img src="images/i024.jpg" alt="They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame</em></span> +</div> +<p> +Lois had married her husband because of the bright +honor and force of character which attracted others, and +because of his conquering love for her. She would have +felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to have +loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most +unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had +exulted in the thought that when other women were satisfied +with mere half-men, her lover was a Saul among his +brethren; and she was not deceived in her estimate of him—the +honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of disposition +which made it a pain for him to make note of the +defects of those he liked, the love of her—all were there; +but she was beginning gradually to find out, after all these +years, that inside that shining outer circle of character +was a whole world of thought and feeling and preference +and habit of which she knew nothing—only as time went +on did she begin to perceive the extent of it. +</p> +<p> +Those disappointing moments when they were not in +accord—whole days sometimes dropped out of the week—left +a void which no caresses filled. It hurts a woman to be +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26'></a>26</span> +forgotten both before and after she is kissed. Lois had +discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was +one of those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship +of wedlock, are a thing apart, to be mentally +left and returned to. Those disappointing moments and +days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but +evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. +She could hardly believe this, although she felt it, +and was continually seeking for disclaimers of what she +knew. Barred indefinitely from some larger interest, her +efforts to reach her husband on the known lines became +more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first +years had held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in +which one was always striving in some way to keep up the +first feelings; everything was more or less upsetting,—marriage, +babies, sickness, housekeeping,—years when +domestic situations changed their shape daily, an evening +together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; +an entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but +on the event of the servants being in or out, or on the +event of having any at all. There were summer afternoons +when Lois had wept because her husband had gone to the +tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone +with him, after elaborately arranging babies and household +matters to that end; when she had kept him waiting +while she dressed, and they had started off heated and asunder +in the broiling sun to something which she did not +enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was +strange to find that the profession of a wife and mother +seemed to imply a contradiction to everything that she had +ever been before. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27'></a>27</span> +</p> +<p> +The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight +with it, a revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate +stillness of the night, was lacking. +</p> +<p> +When she spoke again it was to say: “When do you +take the new place?” +</p> +<p> +“Next month.” +</p> +<p> +“I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will +you go in on a later train in the mornings, dear?” +</p> +<p> +“I’ll take an earlier one.” +</p> +<p> +“But then you’ll come out sooner in the afternoon?” +</p> +<p> +“I’ll come out much later.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, oh!” she sighed, with the prevision of long hours +of loneliness for herself. +</p> +<p> +“At least, you can take more than that miserable two +weeks’ holiday in the summer.” +</p> +<p> +“My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. +You don’t understand; I’ve got to work.” +</p> +<p> +There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and +the room had sunk into partial obscurity. She was the first +to speak, as before, conquering anew the tremulousness in +her voice: +</p> +<p> +“Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next +month?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes. How long is she to stay?” +</p> +<p> +“For all winter. She’s to study music, you remember?” +</p> +<p> +“For all winter!” He sat up straight with the emphasis +of his words. “Why, where will you put her?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’ll manage that. But I do wish we had a larger +house; this is maddening sometimes.” +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps we’ll be able to build some day.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, if we could really have our own house!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28'></a>28</span> +</p> +<p> +She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that +future which is the summit of good to suburban dwellers, +when the contracted space of a rented house can be +changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible +closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout. +</p> +<p> +“I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the +loveliest things to-day in town.” +</p> +<p> +Already the thought of brass and mahogany and +Oriental rugs, rich in texture and delicious in coloring, +filled her mind. +</p> +<p> +To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession +of money meant the opportunity to buy; the +possession of yet more money would mean more opportunity +to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the +ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with +ease and promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most +American husbands in his station, the sum spent upon +house and family far exceeded in ratio his own personal +expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually +looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented +to him pre-eminently further business possibilities, +the power to play competently in the great game, +with the result of a sufficient provision for his wife and +children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at the +thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in +this next year—— +</p> +<p> +“Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go +to town Friday, or wait until next month?” asked Lois +suddenly. +</p> +<p> +“You had better wait,” said Justin, with decision. He +rose, and added: “You must go to bed, Lois.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29'></a>29</span> +</p> +<p> +She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially. +</p> +<p> +“Good night.” +</p> +<p> +“You are not going to sit up later!” +</p> +<p> +“Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for +something in this paper I forgot to notice earlier.” +</p> +<p> +He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he +must stay for a brief space beyond the sound of her voice. +</p> +<p> +“Now, don’t wait another moment, or you’ll get cold.” +He spoke authoritatively. “The fire’s almost out.” +</p> +<p> +He had already turned from her, and was sitting down +by the dim flicker of the newly lighted candle, absorbed +once more in figures, with the newspaper before him. The +midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; both experienced +the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows +time-worn and trivial conversation. +</p> +<p> +Lois’ pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she +left the room; but after a slight interval she returned +with a gliding step and softly placed a fresh log upon the +dull red embers of the dying fire, and fanned them noiselessly +until a flame leaped out again, holding her white +draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling +across her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful +self-forgetting smile shone out and became a part of the +light around him before she vanished once more through +the doorway. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30'></a>30</span>CHAPTER THREE</h2> +<p> +Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, +plush-covered seat of the sleeping-car, with her +hands folded in her lap, looking out of the window +at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green +rows of cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of +scrub-oak and pine, dotted here and there with gray +cabins, around which negroes, little and big, in scanty +garments were grouped to watch the train go by; occasionally +it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a +wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced +by no name for the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic +legend, “Southern Express Company,” on a swinging +board at one end. It was before these ultimate days when +factories are springing up all over the new South, and she +had not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their +staring yellow frames by the side of the muddy streams; +only the cotton-fields and the scrub-oaks ran along by the +train, with the view of the blue mountains here and there, +and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had never +seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world +outside of her home. +</p> +<p> +There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, +as that of the girl who is supposed to be contented +with the little rounds of household life. Dosia’s +mother had died when she was a small child, but so much +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31'></a>31</span> +love and care had been given her by relatives and by her +father, a professor in a small college and a gentle and good +man, that she had never felt the loss. When she was twelve +years old her father married again, and, on account of his +failing health, they moved from their home in the West to +the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small income +which he already possessed, to engage in some industry +suitable to his limited powers; but in the enervating +climate he gradually lost all ambition and business habits. +He became yellow in complexion and slouching as to +appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than +before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the +loungers around the village store or the new people from +the North who came to learn the methods pertaining to +cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything should +be done. +</p> +<p> +He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always +placid and amiable, and only regretting, as he continually +affirmed, that he could not provide for the family as he +should. The children, of whom there were four by this +second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, who +was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, +and almost as self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother +had from the first attached herself to Dosia, +whom she treated even at that early stage of life less as +a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all emergencies. +</p> +<p> +Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period +in her existence the unthinking content of childhood had +left her. It was natural to live in the small, poorly built +house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with broken fences, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32'></a>32</span> +with small children to dress and care for and a baby to be +tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, +with a continual desultory striving after a refinement of +dress and living that was never accomplished. It was a +matter of course to be always “clearing up,” yet never in +order, and to be always economizing temporarily in view +of the stated remittance which never could be used for +paying anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia +was a sweet-natured child, affectionate and helpful, with a +healthy constitution which made work unnoticeable, and +she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned way according +to the views of her elders, without criticism or +comment. Her education, although desultory, had been +fairly good, depending partly on teachers who came from +the North and stayed in Balderville for their health, and +partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well as +culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he +felt like it; for that, as everything else, was a matter of +inclination with him and not of duty. She was fond of +reading, and had also somewhat of a talent for music, +which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results +with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she +had been well taught at the beginning. +</p> +<p> +Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent +order that obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors +was bad or good, according to the year, like the peaches +or cotton. With some of these visitors Dosia formed eager, +transitory friendships, but with others there could be no +assimilation. There were a few nice families settled in the +place, more or less bound together by a community of interest +centering in Balderville and the future of their +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33'></a>33</span> +children, who were usually sent away to school when half +grown. +</p> +<p> +Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing +faculties of its own—a terrible clear-sightedness, for one +thing, and a black-and-white ruled-out sense of justice and +injustice; it brought an absolutely new sense of values to +Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to +dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked +upon as entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and +stepmother, were really the inevitable expressions of law. +She saw that the true character of her parents was quite +different from their own idea of it; that they would never +change materially, and therefore, in the very nature of +things, their fortunes could never change materially; +they would always be going a little faster or a little +slower on a down grade. She wondered at the exhaustless +capacity of complacently believing in worn fallacies which +her young eyes saw pitilessly as such. Her stepmother still +looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as a successful +and energetic man of business for the moment only +disabled by his failing health, and believed herself to be +always on the point of managing the little money they had +with superhuman economy, so that it would cover all +household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could +never be more money, and that what there was must always +slip away. This knowledge laid the future waste and rendered +effort futile. What was the use, for instance, of +putting cushions on the lounge over the place where there +was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new +one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of +pretending that when the cracked and heterogeneous +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34'></a>34</span> +plates and dishes were replaced the table would be properly +set once more? They never would be replaced. +</p> +<p> +If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn +would have embittered her; as it was, she was still loving, +but she grew tired. She taught a little, in the odd chances +that served, and gained a few pence here and there by it, +for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went +to the simple entertainments of the place, which were +mostly among the older people, and played the piano +sometimes at them, when she could be spared long enough +from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The +young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity +and childish habit in pairing off insensibly as +they grew up; it was always said of such and such a one, +in local parlance, that they “went together,” and arrangements +were made in view of this known fact whenever +festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never +“gone with” anyone for more than a few days at a time, +when some young visitor staying in the place had given +her the preference in the dances and picnics and straw-rides. +For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked and +took care of the children, and read, and found her father’s +walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the +dogs and went on errands. Her father and stepmother were +quite contented, and why should she not be? +</p> +<div><a name='i034' id='i034'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i004' id='i004'></a> +<img src="images/i034.jpg" alt="Theodosia" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Theodosia</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35'></a>35</span></div> +<p> +But there came a time when there seemed to be no point +to living; after the day’s work, what was there? What +would there ever be? The children played merrily and went +to bed happy. The father and mother loved each other, +their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they +were contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to +task for her own discontent, she prayed against it, she +made bracing rules for herself which she strove to follow; +she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she was nobly self-sacrificing. +Mrs. Linden often said that she didn’t know how +they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often +spoke of the advantages she would like to give the girl, +and at first Dosia had listened with pleased hope to these +aspirations, but as no effort was ever made to realize them +in even the simplest way, they only served after a while to +show more plainly the flatness of living. +</p> +<p> +Many a night—like many another girl!—Dosia sat in +the window of her shelving attic room, bathed in the +golden moonlight, with her hair falling on her shoulders +and her hands clasped before her, a picture for none to +see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were +around her. The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! +In vain she tried to stem it. She longed inexpressibly for +that outer world, of which she had read, where youth was +a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, clever, +self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old régime +where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to +learn more about many things,—she longed to study +music,—but she felt no inspiration and no desire for the +life of an artist; she was, in fact, just a girl, who longed +with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less intensely, for +the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, the +excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little +daily delights, and—love. She dimly discerned unknown +glories that made her breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed +of some one in the far future who would be very good and +very noble, whose love would hold her to everything that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36'></a>36</span> +was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove herself +extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, +and whose hand on hers would set her heart beating. She +imagined pouring out her heart to him,—that heart which +seemed to be forever shut in her breast now, with none to +understand it, none to care,—going to him with all these +doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the +blessedness of his response. “You darling,” he would say, +“don’t you know I was loving you all the time? We neither +of us knew each other, to be sure, but the love was there +all the same; it had existed since the beginning of the +world.” +</p> +<p> +She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy +which affects not only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, +and which does not need iron as a curative power so +much as a legitimate and healthy excitement. Even Mrs. +Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and +showed listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors +had openly commented on the fact; she said placidly +that she was really worried about Dosia, and wished that +she could have a change. And then one of those impossible, +wonderful things happened which alter the whole surface +of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia +was to go to New York to study music, and spend the +winter with a married cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of +the suburbs. +</p> +<p> +Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, +dressed in a new suit of blue serge, which had been sent +from Atlanta, to fit her measure, with the rest of her traveling +outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, with her head in +its little gray felt hat against the high back of the seat, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37'></a>37</span> +and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at +the fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess. +</p> +<p> +Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not +of choice—bleared and shapeless in effect from much +“making over,” as purchase was not to be thought of. +Dosia had had no new clothing for such a long time that +the sensation of delight was so keen that she almost felt +as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with +the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted +perfume of the suède gloves was subtly intoxicating. +She took furtive glimpses of herself in the glass +panel beside her, and the sight filled her with a delighted +wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so +much like other people. +</p> +<p> +It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her +face; she had that exaggerated idea of the importance of +dress which belongs to people who have never been able +to exercise their taste or fancy for it—particularly those +who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet was like a +picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she +cared little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthful—just +a girl’s face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, +when the color varied in it with the moment. She had blue +eyes, a good mouth with a short upper lip, white teeth, +and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert look +in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; +her slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her +lips parted unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, +with her varying color, gave her a charm. +</p> +<p> +But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless +expression of extreme youth which experience has +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38'></a>38</span> +never touched, which has nothing to remember and nothing +to forget—the typical fair white page, still unwritten +upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday. +</p> +<p> +When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first +only the family group at the station as she had left it: her +father, tall, gray-bearded, with hollow eyes, a continually +working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn hat and an old +striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and +unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt +pinned with a large brass safety-pin dragging away from +the belt; three barefooted children in nondescript attire +beside her, and a curly-haired, brown-eyed boy of two +holding her dress with one hand and throwing kisses with +the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The +elders had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled +remorsefully at the thought; she had been so shamelessly +glad to go! And yet, she did love them. Mingled with a +sense of kindness was also a strange little disappointment—she +felt that when they turned homeward with their +backs to the train they would let her slip out of their lives +with the same ease with which they had accustomed themselves +to let other things go, with a selfish inertia too deep +to feel anything long. Only the baby—little Rolf—he +would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a while, for +his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her +arms yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of +latent motherhood unknown to her placid stepmother. It +was characteristic of this girl, who was tired of taking +care of children, that the fact of there being a two-year-old +baby also at her cousin’s house seemed now its crowning +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39'></a>39</span> +attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations +about the darling. +</p> +<p> +After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of +traveling, blurred out the past for her. She was journeying +to the life that was hers by right; the luxurious appointments +of the car, her own new elegance, began to seem +a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, indeed, she had +been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card offered +her by the white-aproned colored waiter and selected her +dinner as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing +it that she thought he had forgotten it; but at last he +brought the meal, and she ate it from the table which he +had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; there was +an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act +which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence. +Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, +and took off her jacket, and made herself comfortable, as +she saw others had done. The car was by no means crowded, +and she had seen from the first that there was no one +who could serve as a peg to hang a romance on—only middle-aged +women and men, and a mother with half-grown +children. She fell to wondering, as she had done many times +before, what her cousins would be like; she was prepared +to love them dearly. With the unconscious egotism of her +age, everything in this new life was to revolve around her. +The other players were accessories—she was the star performer. +</p> +<p> +The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and +dark, of green and shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered +white houses and rounded overhanging slopes that +shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamed—and dreamed. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40'></a>40</span> +Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush +and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and +impalpable cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the +berths were made up, people sitting the while in tired, silent +groups in other sections, holding on to cloaks and +hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind the curtains. +Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the +brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and +then lay down at last without removing any clothing, with +both hands tucked under her soft cheek and her eyes staring +before her. There had been a bustle of walking to and +fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while +all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward +a little when the train went suddenly around a curve. +Gradually those wide-open blue eyes began to close; she +seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on pillows of roseate +down, between waking and sleeping; and then—<em>God in +heaven</em>! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, +helpless terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching +her, beating her against the planks, jamming her into +awful darkness as if she were a creature without bone or +sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself among the other +voices shrieking. A plunge, and then—nothing. +</p> +<p> +The night was inky black, and the wind that swept +down the gorge brought an occasional raindrop with it. +Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long while after that +she heard voices, then a man’s hand was passed over her +face and a voice close above her said, “It is a woman,” +and added, bending still nearer to her, “Can you +speak?” +</p> +<p> +Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41'></a>41</span> +instead, she broke into a helpless sobbing in which there +were no tears. The man spoke to some one near, and she +became aware that there were other sounds of talking and +distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light +twinkled and disappeared. +</p> +<p> +Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting +her head gently, placed something soft under it. His touch +was compassionate, and his tone still more so as he said: +</p> +<p> +“Are you in much pain?” +</p> +<p> +She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke +for her. She wanted to question him, but could not. He +seemed to divine her thought. +</p> +<p> +“Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you +wonder where you are. There has been a terrible accident—the +trestle gave way, and one car fell down here; the others, +I believe, smashed farther up somewhere. People are coming +to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do +now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do +just as I tell you? Move your right foot—yes, there—now +your left—now this arm—now the other. Why, that’s brave +of you!”—as she tried to raise herself a little. “Perhaps +you will be able to stand soon.” He broke off suddenly with +a groan: “I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to +Heaven I had! but there’s not a drop left in the flask.” +</p> +<p> +The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, +and the sounds of moving and confusion around increased. +The lights Dosia had seen above seemed to get nearer, and +then twinkled down close to the wreck; but even then, in the +opaque blackness of the night, they remained only isolated +points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they +dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42'></a>42</span> +and went backward and forward; with them came more +voices and stumbling feet, sounds half swallowed by the +depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of +wind. +</p> +<p> +Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the +fleeting flash of a lantern above her revealed that there was +no one beside her; it was like being dropped again into +nothingness. She did not know how long she lay there. +With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, +though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised +her to a sitting position, and held her there, with her head +resting against the shoulder of this new-found friend. +“Drink this—all of it. I want to see if you can stand after +a few moments, and perhaps walk—there are so few stretchers.” +Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder. +</p> +<p> +“No, I will not leave you”—he spoke as one would to +a little child, as she made a faint, terrified motion to hold +his arm—“I will not leave you. I will take you every step +of the way. You are a girl, aren’t you? Were you alone +on the train? Had you no friends with you?” +</p> +<p> +She whispered with some difficulty, “No one.” +</p> +<p> +“You are perhaps spared much.” There was a silence. +Presently he said gently: “We must not wait here too +long; we must follow the lanterns—see, they are going. +You can stand; now try and walk. Give me your hand—that +way. Lean on me. Take one step—now another. Come! +Don’t be afraid—you <em>must</em>.” +</p> +<p> +With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost +carrying her, she essayed to walk. Shaking at each step +pitifully at first, then growing stronger, with one hand +locked in his, she found herself ascending the rocky path +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43'></a>43</span> +of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The +lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel +into which the light was walled solidly. He was leading her +along the railroad-ties. As she stumbled from time to time, +she became formlessly conscious that he winced and caught +his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from +falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of +his suffering grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed +in her weak condition such a terrible load to bear, that she +wept helplessly. +</p> +<p> +He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at +her anxiously. “What’s the matter?” +</p> +<p> +“I’m hurting you.” +</p> +<p> +“Not more than I can stand. Don’t stop to talk about +it; we mustn’t fall behind. Hold my hand fast.” +</p> +<p> +The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain +met the wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, +struggling forms were all ahead with the drowning lanterns. +The walk had become an incessant, endless thing, +dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the +protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand—a +strong, clean touch, that subtly conveyed warmth to the +blood and courage to the heart. With her palm pressed +to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that she +could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, +sure that he knew the path and that it led to some unknown +good. They seemed to grow as one in the unspoken +comforting of trust. +</p> +<p> +Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden +clatter of horses’ hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. +A wagon stopped beside them. Dosia found herself lifted in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44'></a>44</span> +and laid on a pile of straw. There were others lifted in +also; then the horses jogged on with their load, carrying +her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and +with whom she had exchanged no word of farewell. +</p> +<p> +She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, +where she lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin +who had been sent for. But through her life long that hand-clasp +stood to Theodosia Linden for all the high, protecting +care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, unselfish +thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding +of which is her greatest good on earth. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45'></a>45</span>CHAPTER FOUR</h2> +<p> +It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day +after Dosia had begun her journey, that Justin Alexander +started out to take possession of the office and +factory. The departure from his old place was a thing of +the past, the preparations for entering into the new business +were at an end. Every evening during the last month +had been taken up in consultations with Leverich and Martin, +and every other spare minute had been given to looking +over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory +and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the +project. It was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of +intellect hitherto perforce in abeyance, and he did not see +the frequent glance of satisfaction which his two backers +often gave each other across the table as he propounded +his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; +his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest +expressions of regret from his former companions. The +only one he had been really sorry to leave was Callender; +it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow any more. +</p> +<p> +But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master +now. For a man who has barely lived each month upon +his earnings, to have fifty thousand dollars in the bank +subject to his order is a fairly pleasurable sensation. Justin +had always inveighed against the idea that character, +like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46'></a>46</span> +insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his +overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning +had certainly developed a larger manner in him. The +ease of affluence is first assimilated in thought, which acts +upon the muscles. Justin did not know that the buoyancy +of a golden self-confidence had communicated itself to the +very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his +closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a +new ring in it. It is the transmutation of metal into the +blood—the revivifying power which the seekers after the +philosopher’s stone recognized so thoroughly. +</p> +<p> +He had come to town on an earlier train than he was +accustomed to take, and the people whom he passed were +not familiar to him. There was a newness to the bright +day, even in that, that marked the novel undertaking; the +air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by with +yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh +and eager look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars +had an enlivening condensation of sound in distinction to +the hard rumble and jar of the wagons, but all the noises +were inspiriting as part of a great and concentrated movement +in which the day awoke to an enormous energy—an +energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to +reflect it, as a mirror reflects the expression of those who +look upon it. +</p> +<p> +His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to +go, above the Wall Street line of work and into that great +city of wholesale industries which stretches northward. The +streets at this hour were new to him and filled with new +sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, being +put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47'></a>47</span> +small wares, were fewer and of a different order from those +he had been used to seeing. The passers-by were different. +There were a great many girls in bright hats and shabby +jackets, who talked incessantly as they walked, and disappeared +down side streets which looked dark and cold +and damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. +He turned into one of these streets himself, and walked +eastward toward the river. +</p> +<p> +As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared +to him before, and never would again. He might have been +in a foreign city, so keenly did he notice every detail. The +street was filled at first with drays, loading up with huge +boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the entrances +of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled +at the ropes of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy +buildings in which was heard the whir of machinery, and +he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, moving backward +and forward with strange motions. From across the +street came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one +threw up a window and looked out, and a row of girls +passed into view with heads bent forward and bodies swaying +shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, +pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth +poured out around them; and all these toilers seemed no +beaten-down wage-earners, but the glad chorus in his own +drama of work. Between the factories there began to show +neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron railings +and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; +basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the +windows and wilted vegetables on the sidewalk, where +women with shawled heads were grouped; attenuated furnishing-stores +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48'></a>48</span> +for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in +the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a +salient corner, was the large and ornate building of a +patent-medicine concern, towering high into the air, and seeming +to preach with lofty benevolence to those below that to +be truly respectable and happy you must be rich. +</p> +<p> +Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences—the +houses were not so many, and the factories gave +place to warehouses again. The influence of those tall masts +at the foot of the street began to be felt, although the +signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships’ stores. +Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling +that attracted Justin’s particular attention, wedged in as +it was between the taller buildings on either side. It varied +from the others he had seen by the depths of its squalor. +The stone steps were defaced and broken; the windows as +well as the arched fan-light over the entrance—a relic of +bygone days—had only a few jagged pieces of glass left; +and a black hallway was revealed to view through the open +door. The windows were so near the street that it was +easy to see into the front room—an interior so sordid and +forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it. +</p> +<p> +The room was empty. The walls had been covered once +with a brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in +great patches, showing the green mold beneath. Under the +black marble mantelpiece, thickly covered with white dust, +was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps stood also +out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and +broken remnants of furniture. In the background was a +hideous black haircloth sofa. Heaven only knows with what +past it had been associated to give that creeping feeling in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49'></a>49</span> +the veins of the sober and practical man who gazed at it; +it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen +and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained +hold on the human intelligence, with no respect of persons. +It gave Justin a momentary chill to think of passing this +each day. Then he looked up, half turning as he felt that +some one was observing him, and met the eye of a man +who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered +suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace +together since he had turned into this street from Broadway. +</p> +<p> +The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious +comradeship which surprised Justin, who held himself +a little more stiffly and hurried forward at a quicker +pace to reach his destination, which was now in sight. His +eye approved the new paint and the air of decent reserve +which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side +of the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his +name conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned +again involuntarily, and the man on the other side of the +street, who was himself on the point of entering a hallway, +turned also. This time Justin smiled in response. The +opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling +his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the +air of proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting +gave a welcome pleasure to rivalry, and brought back +the dew of the morning. +</p> +<p> +The offices were in the second story, his own especial one +railed off near the front windows and covered with a new +green rug. To one side were the compartments of his subordinates +and the open desk-room of the lower clerks; beyond +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50'></a>50</span> +these was the packing department of the factory; +from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking +of machinery. The larger parts of the instrument—the +copper tubing and the steel bars—were bought in the +rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper functions +here, where, also, the more intricate portions were manufactured. +</p> +<p> +The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a +timing-machine invented and patented some years before +in Connecticut, and sold to a manufacturer there, who had +taken it as a side issue and failed properly to exploit it. +The right to it had changed hands several times, during +which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally +domiciled in New York. In the meantime other machines, +differing slightly in construction, had also been patented +and put on the market in various cities, none of them with +any great success until the present moment. Then the public +began to wake up suddenly to the value of timing-machines, +and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, +seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to +the Warford Standard Typometer—so called because, in +addition to measuring stated periods of elapsed time, it +mechanically produced a type-written statement of it. +The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits +never quite attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its +present purchasers. They said all it needed now was +push. +</p> +<p> +Thousands of little books entitled “Sixty Seconds with +the Typometer” had been sent abroad in the last month, +setting forth with attractive brevity, and in large black +print that could be read without glasses, Why you wanted +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51'></a>51</span> +a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where +you could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in +the daily papers, in which the sales of the machine reached +an effective aggregate. +</p> +<p> +The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging +ahead under the renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, +and their portrayal of its future was within the bounds of +possibility. The foreman of the factory was one of the +original workmen, and some of the men had also been associated +with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear +ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper +and manager, an elderly man, had also remained a fixture +through all the fluctuations, and had been the great dependence +of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the +requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justin’s +services would have been needed at all. +</p> +<p> +As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, +the foreman stepped out from among the machinery to +offer his greeting; he was a slight man with deep-set, +swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that drooped at the +corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, muscular +arms. +</p> +<p> +To Justin’s pleasant good morning he responded, with +a quick gleam of pleasure in his eyes: +</p> +<p> +“Good morning, sir. I’m glad to see you here so early. +You’ve perhaps heard of the big order that came in last +night from Cincinnati.” +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Justin; “I came up here first. That’s good +news, Bullen.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, sir. I’ve made a list of the stock we’ll need as soon +as we can get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52'></a>52</span> +moment ago. I’ll want to see you later, Mr. Alexander, +about taking on more men.” +</p> +<p> +“Very well,” said Justin. His step was jubilant as he +descended to the office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory +news from Harker, the assistant manager. +</p> +<p> +“And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander,” +he said. +</p> +<p> +They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin +opened them, one by one, it was impossible not to feel the +sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified ambition. It was his +efforts in the new line which were bringing in this first harvest; +all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin +and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, +he had weighed their propositions and conclusions in +a secret balance. He meant, within due limits, to conduct +this business as he thought best. If orders came in every +day like this—and why should they not? if not now, at +least in the near future—— +</p> +<p> +The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued +with the smell of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications +that arise later on as one gets down into the solid +experience of an undertaking, hampered by the work of +yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully +absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone +was busy, and the master busiest of all. To write out checks +for money which has been furnished by some one else is +a keen pleasure at the first blush; the store and the coffers +seem illimitable to him who has not earned it. Afterwards—— +</p> +<p> +“By the way, Harker,” he asked once, in an interval of +waiting, “what is the concern across the street?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53'></a>53</span> +</p> +<p> +“It’s much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander.” +</p> +<p> +Justin looked up, surprised. “I never knew that.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; +it’s the Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after +a fashion—not as good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs +horribly after you’ve worked it for a while. They’ve got +one in the billiard-room around the corner.” +</p> +<p> +“And this Mr. Cater—has he been in the business +long?” +</p> +<p> +“He was here when we came, two years ago.” +</p> +<p> +Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a +decent place for luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was +hardly surprised, when he seated himself by a little white +table in a small, rather dark room, to look up and recognize +opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L. +Cater. +</p> +<p> +“I was wondering how soon you’d find this place out,” +said the latter. He spoke with a Southern drawl. “You +don’t get a very large repertoire here, but what they do +give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and that’s an +art. And it’s clean.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to +be usually spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more +social feeling toward those who let him alone, but even the +shadows of this golden day were translucent. +</p> +<p> +“I reckon you know who I am—Angevin L. Cater. +Angevin’s a queer name, isn’t it? French—several generations +back.” +</p> +<p> +To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was +required. After a moment Mr. Cater began again: +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps you think it’s strange—my speaking to you +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54'></a>54</span> +in this way. Of course I’ve seen you coming to Number +270, and knew that you were taking charge there, but +that’s not the whole of it. I’m from Georgia—got a wife +and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville +now.” He paused to give this impressive fact full weight. +“You’ve some relatives there, haven’t you, by the name +of Linden?” +</p> +<p> +“My wife has,” said Justin, with new attention. +</p> +<p> +“Well, I reckon I heard of you some this fall when I +was home. Miss Theodosia was talking of spending the +winter North with you, she asked me if I knew Mr. Justin +Alexander, and I had to tell her no. I didn’t think I’d meet +up with you so soon. Heard from her lately?” +</p> +<p> +“We expect Miss Linden to-morrow,” said Justin. +“How is Mr. Linden getting on? We haven’t heard very +good accounts of him lately.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Linden’s a mighty fine man; he ain’t successful, +that’s all. I find a heap of mighty fine men that ain’t successful, +don’t you? I don’t think it’s anything against a +man that he ain’t successful. Besides, old man Linden ain’t +got his health; you can’t do anything if you haven’t +got your health. His wife’s a mighty fine lady—pretty, +too; but she ain’t much on dressin’ up; stays at home and +takes care of her children. And Miss Dosia—well, Miss +Dosia’s a peach. Talented, too—I tell you, she can bang +the ivories! But she’s been kinder pinin’ lately; I reckon +she needs a change—though a change isn’t always what it’s +cracked up to be. I’ve found that out, haven’t you? I +changed into a New York business two years ago, and it’s +taken all my strength to buck up against it till now. I +reckon maybe it’ll carry me along all right—now.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55'></a>55</span> +</p> +<p> +“You’re in the same line that I am, I understand,” said +Justin, who had been eating while the other talked. +</p> +<p> +“Why, yes, you might call it that, I guess both machines +started in Connecticut. A cousin of mine owned one, +he said Warford stole his idea and got it patented first—I +don’t know. When he died he left me what money he had, +and I took up the concern. I’ve got a Yankee side to me as +well as a Southern side; sometimes I get tuckered out +tryin’ to combine ’em.” +</p> +<p> +“You say that trade is looking up now?” asked Justin. +</p> +<p> +“Well, yes, it is. The public is beginning to learn the +value of time as recorded by the timoscript.” His eyes +twinkled. “Our machine is put together better than the +Warford. I feel it my duty to say that, Mr. Alexander. +It’s simpler, for one thing—there ain’t so many little cogs +to catch and get out of order. No complex mechanism; a +child can run it—that’s what my circulars say. I believe in +advertising, same as you; I don’t object to your booming +trade. The more people there are, now, who know there is +a time-machine, the more there’ll be to find they’ve had a +long-felt want for one, no matter what you call it. And—you +shouldn’t hurry over your luncheon so, Mr. Alexander,” +for Justin had thrown down his napkin and was +rising. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve got to be back at the office by two,” said Justin, +glancing at the clock, which showed five minutes of the +hour. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, you can walk it in three minutes; but of course +you’re not down to that yet. I’m glad to have met up with +you, sir, and I hope to see you often. I reckon this town’s +big enough for two of a kind.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56'></a>56</span> +</p> +<p> +“Thank you,” said Justin, glad to escape. He had been +telling himself during the conversation that he would take +care to avoid Mr. Angevin L. Cater’s favorite haunt for +the future, but he was surprised to find a change gradually +stealing over him after he had left the man. There +are some persons, distinctly agreeable at first, whose absence +materializes an unexpected aversion to their further +acquaintance; others, whose company one has found +tedious, leave a wholesome flavor, after all, behind them. +Mr. Cater appeared to be of the latter class. Justin found +himself smiling with real kindness once or twice as he +thought of his opposite neighbor. +</p> +<p> +But there was little time for turning aside during the +afternoon—the evening as well as the morning were component +parts of that golden day. The orders that came in +gave a wonderful effect of luck, although they were +largely the legitimate outcome of well-planned efforts. Justin +thought the work of the last six months was bringing +its fulfillment now, but this clear stream of accomplishment +showed him the way to a mighty ocean. Power, power, +power! The sense of it was in his finger-ends as he focused +his mind on world-embracing schemes; with that impelling +current of strength, he could have turned even failure to +success, and he knew it. +</p> +<p> +The hours were all too short for transacting the business +that had to be done, and for all the consultations as +to ways and means. It would take some time to put these +preparations on a larger scale. +</p> +<p> +Justin was ready to leave at six o’clock, with a bundle of +price-lists under his arm to look over when he got home. The +last mail was handed to him just as he was locking his desk. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57'></a>57</span> +</p> +<p> +“There is no use in my looking over these to-night, +Harker,” he said. “You can get at them the first thing +in the morning. I will be down even earlier than to-day. +Stay—” His eye had caught sight of an envelope with the +name of a well-known Chicago firm on it. He tore it open, +ran his eye rapidly over the contents, and then handed it, +with a gesture as of abdication, to Harker. The bookkeeper +was the first to break the silence. +</p> +<p> +“I thought we were getting along pretty rapidly to-day,” +he said, “but it seems that we haven’t even started. +This tops all! We’ll have to get a big move on, Mr. Alexander. +They’re giving us very short time.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Justin. He lingered irresolutely, and then +laid down his papers with the hat which he held ready to +put on, and went over to the safe. He took from it five new +ten-dollar bills and tucked them into his waistcoat pocket. +They sent a glow to his heart, for they were intended as a +little gift to his wife; it seemed to him that this last good +fortune had given him the right to make her a visible +sharer in it. +</p> +<p> +As he ran up the steps of his home, he collided with a +small boy who was holding a bicycle with one hand and +proffering a yellow envelope through the open doorway +with an outstretched arm. Lois was taking it. She and +Justin read the telegram at the same moment, before it +fell fluttering to the ground between them, as both hands +dropped it. +</p> +<p> +“I cannot possibly go,” he said, staring at her. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Justin! I will, then—some one <em>must</em>.” +</p> +<p> +“No, no, <em>you</em> can’t; that’s nonsense. Great heavens! +for this to come at such a time!” He broke off again, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58'></a>58</span> +staring helplessly before him. Leverich was in St. Louis, Martin +at his home ill. “Why didn’t the girl start last week, as +she intended?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, the poor child—don’t blame <em>her</em>. The accident +must have been so terrible!” +</p> +<p> +“Yes—yes, indeed.” He sat down in the hall chair, while +his wife signed the telegraph-book which the boy incidentally +held open for her as he chewed gum. When she +finished, she saw that Justin was pouring over the time-table +in an evening paper; he laid it down to say: +</p> +<p> +“If I start back for town in ten minutes I can catch +the eight-thirty train south, and get home again to-morrow +night or the morning after, if Theodosia is able +to travel. That will only make me lose one day.” One day! +He shook his head in bitter impatience. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I hate to have you go in this way! Shall I send +word to the office for you?” +</p> +<p> +“No; I’ll write some telegrams on the way in. I’ll run +up-stairs and put a few things in the bag, and kiss the +children good night—I hear them calling.” He put his +hand in his pocket and hurriedly drew out the crisp roll +of bills, and looked at them ruefully. +</p> +<p> +“I brought this money for you, Lois, but I’ll have to +take it with me, I’m afraid, for I might run short.” He put +his arm around her for a brief instant, in answer to her +exclamation. “No, don’t get me anything to eat; I haven’t +time, I tell you. I’ll get what I want later, on the train.” +In the strong irritation which he was curbing he felt as +if he would never want to eat again. He was in reality by +nature both kind and compassionate, but the worst sting +of trouble lies often in the fact that it is so inopportune. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59'></a>59</span>CHAPTER FIVE</h2> +<p> +“Are we near New York?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Justin, smiling encouragement +at his young companion. He stood up and took +down from the rack above them Dosia’s jacket, which had +been reclaimed from the wreck soaked and torn, and a +boy’s cap in lieu of her missing hat. +</p> +<p> +“You had better put these on now, and then you can +rest again for a little while before we have to move.” +</p> +<p> +It was unavoidable that after the enforced journey the +sight of Dosia’s white face and imploring eyes should have +filled him with a rush of tender compassion which completely +blotted out the previous reluctance from his memory. +Few men spend their time regretting past stages of +thought, and he had naturally accepted her tremulous +thankfulness for his solicitude. +</p> +<p> +After the long day of travel in Justin’s company, the +color had begun to return faintly to Dosia’s lips and +cheeks. She was also growing to feel a little more at home +with him; he had seemed too much a stranger and she had +been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. +He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in +numberless ways, and thoughtful of her comfort, and +always smiled encouragingly when he looked at her. Now, +at the journey’s end, he began to talk, in a secret restlessness +which he could not own. His mind had been busy all +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60'></a>60</span> +day with the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but +as he neared home he could not shake off a haunting premonition +of something unpleasant to come. +</p> +<p> +“Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting +the new cousin,” he said. +</p> +<p> +“Will they?” asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. +“But they will be looking out for you as well as for me.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. +But I was wrong in saying that both children would be up, +for it will be nearly seven when we reach the house, and +they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be there. I hope +you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at our +house.” +</p> +<p> +“I love children,” said Dosia, with the solemnity of a +profession of faith. +</p> +<p> +“I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl +who has her hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and +the rest of it straggles around in light wisps, or is gathered +into an inconceivably small pigtail at the back of her +neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, little white +teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and wisdom, +because at the age of six she is the eldest daughter—and +that means a great deal, you know.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh,” said Dosia, “I am an ‘eldest daughter.’” She +choked, momentarily, as she thought of the family at home. +“Was it only last night that you started for me?” she +asked, after a pause during which she had looked hard out +of the car-window. +</p> +<p> +“Yes; I’ve made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky +that we could catch that eight-thirty express this morning; +if we hadn’t it would have put us back nearly twenty-four +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61'></a>61</span> +hours—and that would have been bad,” he added under his +breath. +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one +day,” said Dosia timidly. She felt somehow away outside +of his inner thought, as if she had no inherent place in his +mind at all. “You are just starting in business, aren’t +you?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new ventures—Dosia +and the typometer appear on the scene at the +same moment, starting out on a career together; and for +this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is all. I hope +we’ll both be equally successful.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, indeed.” She responded to his smile, and tried to +rally her failing powers. +</p> +<p> +“I am very glad I went for you.” He regarded her with +anxiety. “You could not have made the journey alone.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I could have—but I am so glad you came!” said +Dosia. She leaned against the window, with closed eyes, to +rest—her wan face, her dress, crumpled and stained, the +negligence of her hair, which she had been unable to arrange +properly, and her air of fatigue making a pitiful +contrast to the girl who had started out so gayly on her +travels in her trim attire two days before. Now, as in many +another moment of silence, she felt once more the hurtling +fall, the pressure of darkness, and the ravages of the rain +and wind; the nightmare horror of the wreck was upon +her; only the remembered clasp of a hand held her reason +firm. She had spent half the day in thinking of that unknown +friend, and the thought seemed to put her under +some obligation of high and pure living, in a cloistered +gratitude. A girl who had been saved in that way ought to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62'></a>62</span> +be worthy of it. Some day or other—some day—it must be +meant that she should meet him again and tell him what +his help had been to her. She imagined herself engaged in +some errand of mercy—supporting the tottering footsteps +of an old woman as she crossed a crowded street, or carrying +a little sick child, or kneeling by a fever-touched bedside +in a tenement-house, or encouraging a terror-stricken +creature through smoke and fire. She would meet him thus, +and when he said, “How good and brave you are!” she +might look up and say: “I learned it from you. Do you +remember the girl you helped the night the train was +wrecked? I am she.” And when he asked, “How did you +know it was I?” she would answer: “By the tones of your +voice; I would know that anywhere.” And then he would +take her hand again—— +</p> +<p> +Her eyes ached with unshed tears at the lost comfort of +it. She tried to see his form through the blur of darkness +that had enveloped it,—a swinging step, a square set of the +shoulders, an effect of strong young manhood,—and she +pictured his face as noble and beautiful as his care for +her. Her reverie passed through different grades. She +found herself after a while idly scanning Justin’s face and +wondering if it embodied all that was high and good to her +cousin Lois; after one was married a long time, say six or +seven years, did it still matter how a man looked? She felt +herself a little in awe of his keen blue eyes, in spite of his +kindness; she thought she preferred a dark man. +</p> +<p> +She clung to Justin’s arm at the crossings and ferry, +and hardly heard his words, bewildered by the unaccustomed +sights and sounds and the weakness of her knees. +Her feet slipped on the cobblestones, the hurrying people +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63'></a>63</span> +made her dizzy, and the electric lights danced before her +eyes. +</p> +<p> +As they were standing on the boat, two men came up to +speak to Justin; she gathered that they had heard of the +accident and of his journey from Mrs. Alexander at the +whist club the night before, and stopped now to make courteous +inquiries. One, who was short and stout, with a pleasant +if commonplace face, passed on, after his introduction +to Dosia; but the other turned back, as he was following, +to say: +</p> +<p> +“By the way, I see that there was a fire in your new +quarters to-day, Alexander.” +</p> +<p> +“A fire! For Heaven’s sake, Barr——” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I don’t think it amounted to much; there’s just +a line in the evening paper about it. Here, read for yourself—‘fire +confined to one floor, machinery slightly damaged.’ +Insured, weren’t you?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, yes—that isn’t the point now. We can’t afford +to be kept back a minute! I’m glad you told me; I must +go—I must go back at once and see for myself.” He +stopped and looked hopelessly at Dosia. +</p> +<p> +Short as the journey was now, he could not let her continue +it by herself; yet every fiber in him was quivering in +his wild desire to get over to the scene of disaster. He +looked at his informant, who, in his turn, was regarding the +girl beside Justin. +</p> +<p> +“I can go on by myself,” said Dosia, divining his +thought, and wondering when this terrible journey would +ever end. “Truly, I can. I know you want to go and see +about the fire; please, please do! Oh, please!” +</p> +<p> +“Barr, will you take charge of Miss Linden?” asked +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64'></a>64</span> +Justin abruptly. He did not particularly like Barr, but +this was an emergency. “Will you take her to Mrs. Alexander?” +</p> +<p> +“I will, indeed,” said the newcomer, with responsive +earnestness. +</p> +<p> +“Very well, then; I’ll go back on this boat. I’ll be out +on a later train, tell Lois.” He started to make his way +to the other end of the boat, to be in readiness for the return +trip, and turned back once more to give the girl her +ticket; then he was lost to sight, and Theodosia was left, +for the third time, on the hands of an unknown man. +</p> +<p> +This one only spoke to give her the necessary directions +as they joined the usual rush for the train, and refrained +from talking, to her great relief, after he had settled her +comfortably in the car for the last half-hour of traveling. +She leaned against the window-casing, as before, as far +away from him as possible, suddenly and wretchedly aware +of her dilapidated appearance and the boy’s cap that covered +the fair hair curling out from under it. Her cheeks +were whiter than ever, and the corners of her mouth had +the pathetic droop of extreme fatigue. +</p> +<p> +She looked, without knowing it, very young, very forlorn, +and very frightened, and the hand in which she held +the ticket given her by Justin trembled. She was morbidly +afraid that this new person would question her as to the +accident, about which she shrank from speaking; but after +a while, encouraged by his silence, she tried to turn her +thoughts by stealthily observing him. +</p> +<p> +If her friend of the voice and hand of the night before +had been only a tall blur in the darkness, the man beside +her was effectively concrete. Neither tall nor large, he gave +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65'></a>65</span> +an impression of strength and vitality in the ease and +quickness of his motions, which bespoke trained muscles. +She decided that he was rather old—perhaps thirty. Dark-skinned, +black-haired, with a thin face, a low forehead, +deep-set eyes, a high, rather hooked nose, and a mustache, +he was somewhat of the Oriental type, although, as she +learned later, a New Englander by birth and heritage. +Dosia was not quite sure whether the effect was pleasing +or the reverse; there seemed to be something about him +different from the other men she had seen, even in his +clothing, although it was plain enough. +</p> +<p> +Interspersed with these observations were the increasing +throbs of homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her. +Kind as Justin had been, she had felt all the time outside +of his thought and affection. This new companion had +shown consideration for her; she was grateful for it, but she +was unprepared to have him lean suddenly toward +her, as a tear trembled perilously on her lashes, and say, +with twinkling eyes: +</p> +<p> +“I beg your pardon, but do I look like him?” +</p> +<p> +“Like—like whom?” asked Dosia, in amazement. +</p> +<p> +“Like a person to be approved of.” +</p> +<p> +“I haven’t considered the subject,” said Dosia, with +swift dignity. +</p> +<p> +“Ah, you see, it’s the reverse with me. As soon as Mrs. +Alexander told me she was expecting you, my mind was +filled with visions of a sweet young thing from the South. +All sweet young things from the South have dreams; mine +was to embody yours. And when I saw you, I said to myself—I +beg your pardon, do you think I am getting too +personal, on such short acquaintance?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66'></a>66</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” answered Dosia, dimpling in spite of herself, +“very much too personal.” She turned her head away from +him, that she might not see those sparkling, quizzical eyes +so close. +</p> +<p> +“Very well; I will finish the sentence to-morrow, as you +suggest. In the meantime, let me ask you if you have ever +made a collection of conductors’ thumbs?” +</p> +<p> +“No!” said Dosia, in astonishment, turning around +again to face him. +</p> +<p> +“I am told that there is a great deal of character in +them; it is given by the broad, free movement of punching +tickets. I have thought of collecting thumbs for purposes +of study—in alcohol, of course. But why do you look so +surprised?” +</p> +<p> +“I am surprised that you have no collection already,” +said Dosia, with spirit; “you seem to be so enterprising.” +</p> +<p> +He shook his head sadly. “No. How little you know me! +I’m not enterprising in the least; I have no heroic virtues, +I’m only—loving.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” cried Dosia, and stopped short in a ripple of +merriment that was more invigorating than wine, and that +brought a rush of color to her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +“No? well, not until the day after to-morrow, then, if +you say so. You’re so very, very good to me, Miss Linden; +it’s not often I find anyone so considerate as you are. +And have you come up North to make your entrance into +society?” +</p> +<p> +“I have come North to study music,” said Theodosia +impressively. +</p> +<p> +“Music! Ah, there you have me.” He spoke with a new +soberness. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67'></a>67</span> +</p> +<p> +“Do you like it?” +</p> +<p> +“I like it almost better than anything else in the world—too +much, and yet not enough, after all.” He shook his +head with a quick, somber gesture. “I’ll help you with the +music, if you’ll let me. Did you notice how very quickly we +became acquainted? Yes? I know now why; it puzzled me +at first. It was the music in you to which I responded—I +can tell you just what little song of Schubert’s your +smile is from, if you’ll give me time.” +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Dosia, “it isn’t from Schubert at all, and +you’ll never find the key-note to it, so you needn’t try.” +She could not help daring a little, in her girlishness. +</p> +<p> +He laughed. “Oh, I shall make it my business to find out. +For what else what I constituted your guardian at the beginning +of your career? And it’s so good of you to say +that I can come to-morrow and pour out my heart to you! +Shall it be at five? No, please don’t trouble to answer; I +like to look at your ear in that position—it’s so pearly. +Too personal again? Then let us converse about your Old +Kentucky Home.” +</p> +<p> +“It isn’t in Kentucky,” interpolated Dosia desperately, +but there was no stopping him. He was so irrelevantly +absurd that she succumbed at last entirely, and hardly +knew when they left the train; when they walked up the +path to her cousin’s door, they were both laughing causelessly +and irresponsibly, in delightful comradeship. +</p> +<p> +He turned to Dosia after he had rung the bell and said, +“Good night.” +</p> +<p> +“Aren’t you coming in to see my cousin?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes; but this is our farewell. Please make it as +touching as you can.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68'></a>68</span> +</p> +<p> +She looked up frankly as she gave him her hand and said: +</p> +<p> +“Thank you for taking charge of me.” +</p> +<p> +“And making a fool of myself? It was in a good cause, +at any rate. But what I wanted you to say was——” +</p> +<p> +She did not hear, for the door had opened, and he only +waited a moment inside the house to explain her husband’s +absence to Mrs. Alexander. The news arrested her greeting +to Dosia, whom she held tentatively by the hand as she +repeated: +</p> +<p> +“Justin went back to the fire! Oh, I’m so sorry! Do you +think that it was very bad?” +</p> +<p> +“The paper said not.” +</p> +<p> +“It must be out now, anyway. I’m so disappointed that +he did not come home, and I have such a nice little dinner. +Will you not stay, Lawson?” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you—I wish I could.” There was a penetrative, +lingering flash of those still quizzical eyes at Dosia as he +made his adieus, and then he was gone. Why should she +feel alone? +</p> +<p> +Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome, +the warmer for being deferred; and the little Zaidee, whom +she would have known from Justin’s description of her, +was standing first on one tiptoe and then on the other, +waiting to be kissed before going off to bed, as she announced. +From above came the sound of small running feet, +and a child’s voice calling: +</p> +<p> +“Cousin Dosia—I want to see my Cousin Dosia!” A +bare foot and leg surmounted by a fluttering scrap of white +raiment was thrust through the balusters, followed by a +protesting scream as his nurse heavily pursued the fugitive +with upraised voice: +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69'></a>69</span> +</p> +<p> +“Coom back, Reginald, coom back!” There was the +noise of a scuffle as Dosia, with her escort, laughingly +ascended the stairs, to elicit a shriek of terror and a rear +view of the mercurial Reginald in full flight for the nursery +door, which banged after him, and behind which he +still raised his voice, to the shrill accompaniment of the +nurse. +</p> +<p> +“<em>I’ll</em> go in and keep him quiet,” said Zaidee reassuringly, +in answer to her mother’s look of appeal, and she also disappeared +beyond the prison bars, after a whisk of her short +crisp pink skirt, and a smile at Dosia in which her little +white teeth gleamed in an infantile glee that only accentuated +her air of preternatural capability. +</p> +<p> +Her cousin’s kindly hands helped Dosia to remove the +traces of travel, when she had definitely refused the offer +pressed upon her to be undressed and go to bed and have +her dinner brought up to her. It was sweet to be in feminine +care once more, and be pitied for the terrors she had undergone, +and feel the bond of relationship assert itself in spite +of the fact that the cousins had not seen each other since +Dosia’s early childhood. She did not want to be alone up-stairs, +and sat instead in Justin’s place at the table, clad +in a soft silken tea-gown of Lois’ that was in itself restful, +trying to eat and drink and keep up her part in the conversation +about her journey and the absent members of +the family. Changes had crowded so upon poor Dosia that +she felt as if she were living in a kaleidoscope that rattled +her every minute or two into a new position; the glittering +table and her cousin’s form would presently dissolve, +and leave her perhaps out in the crowded, unknown streets, +with wild-eyed faces pressing near her. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70'></a>70</span> +</p> +<p> +After all, she only changed to an arm-chair in the little +drawing-room, with her head against a cushion and her +feet on a foot-stool, and her cousin still beside her, pulling +back the window-curtains once in a while to take a peep +outside for her missing husband; in spite of the real kindness +of her welcome, Dosia felt a certain preoccupation +in it. Her coming was only accessory to the real importance +of his, when she herself should have been the event; the +warmth of heart which she had expected to feel toward +her cousin somehow seemed to fail of expression in this +attitude. At the same time, Lois was also conscious of a +lack of response, a dullness, in Theodosia. Perhaps the +likeness of relationship was answerable for a certain reserve +of manner, a formality which neither knew how to +break then or at a later time, and which was to last until +the barriers were swept away by a mighty flood; but the +real cause of the lack of sympathy lay in something much +deeper. The strong thought of self is inevitably insulating—it +is as restrictive of human contact as a live wire. Dosia, +whose young life had all been spent in unselfishness, was +experiencing unexpectedly the other swing of the pendulum +in an intense and absorbing desire to have everything +now as she wanted it. She was tired of thinking of other +people; the scene should be set now for <em>her</em>. This desire +was a huge mushroom growth, sprung up in a night; +it had no real root in her nature, and would vanish as +suddenly as it had come, but the shadow of it distorted +her. +</p> +<p> +The house was very much smaller than Dosia had imagined, +and her eyes roved over the little drawing-room in +some perplexity, trying to make it come up to her anticipation. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71'></a>71</span> +All dwellers in small country places, where economy +is Heaven’s first law, expect to be dazzled by the +grandeur and elegance of “the city.” People in Balderville +never dreamed of buying new furniture from towns +twenty or thirty miles away; as chair-legs broke off, or +rockers split, or tables came to pieces, all sorts of domestic +devices were resorted to by all but shiftless householders +who tamely submitted to ruin, in coaxing the article into +seeming wholeness and keeping it still in active use. The +best families were learned in all the little ways and capabilities +of string and wire, and wooden cleats and old hinges +and tacks, and pieces of tin cut from tomato-cans, and in +the glueing on of piano-keys, black-walnut excrescences, +ornaments, and sofa-arms. +</p> +<p> +Mended furniture has, however, a deprecating expression +of its own, not to be concealed by any art. Dosia recognized +the absence of it in these trim chairs that stood +nattily on their slender curved legs, in the little shining +tables which did not require to be hidden by a hanging +cloth, and in the china and bric-à-brac placed boldly where +they could be seen on all sides. She wondered a little at the +low wicker arm-chair in which she was sitting, for they +had wicker furnishings in the Balderville hotel, but the +blue-skyed water-color sketches on the walls caught her +fancy, and the vista of a blue-and-white dining-room, seen +through half-closed reddish portières, was charming. For +all the shine and polish and multiplicity of small ornaments +in the tiny apartment, it seemed to lack a kind of +comfort to which she was used, and of which she had +caught a glimpse in the sitting-room as she passed it. She +gave an exclamation of delight as her eyes fell on a stand +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72'></a>72</span> +in one corner of the room on which was a long glass filled +with pink roses. +</p> +<p> +“How beautiful these are! I haven’t seen any finer ones in +Balderville, and you know we are famed for our roses there.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh,” said Lois, “to think that you have been in the +house for over an hour and I never told you about them! +Justin’s not coming upset everything. They were sent to +you this afternoon.” +</p> +<p> +“Sent to <em>me</em>?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes—by Mr. Sutton. Didn’t you say you met him +with Justin on the boat?—a short, stout man with sandy +hair.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, Justin introduced him, but he hardly spoke to +me.” +</p> +<p> +“That doesn’t make any difference, he sent them before +he saw you at all. I told him you were coming, and these +arrived this afternoon. You needn’t feel particularly flattered; +he sends them to everybody.” +</p> +<p> +“Sends them to everybody!” Dosia looked amazed. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes; he’s rich, and devoted to girls. They laugh +at him, but I notice that they are quite ready to accept +his flowers and candy and tickets for the opera. I believe +that he wants to get married; but he really is sensible and +quite nice underneath it all.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” said Dosia, indefinably revolted. “And—and is +Mr. Barr like that, too?” +</p> +<p> +“Who, Lawson? Oh, dear, no; he can’t even support +himself, let alone sending presents.” +</p> +<p> +“He said such queer things,” ventured Dosia, with a +shy desire to talk about him. “I did not know what to +make of it at first.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73'></a>73</span> +</p> +<p> +“Oh, nobody pays any attention to what Lawson says,” +said Lois indifferently. +</p> +<p> +Dosia longed to ask why, with an instant wave of resentment +at this way of speaking; a cloud seemed suddenly +to have descended upon the glittering possibilities of her +future. She fixed her eyes on her cousin, who sat in a high, +slender chair, one arm gowned in yellow silk thrown over +the back of it, and her cheek upon her arm—her rich +coloring, the grace of her attitude, the sweep of her long +black skirt, made a deep impression on the mind of the +little country girl, who seemed slight and meager and insignificant +to herself. And this other woman had been loved—she +had passed through all the experiences to which +Dosia looked forward. Was it that which gave her this +charm thrown over her like a gauzy veil? +</p> +<p> +“What a beautiful waist you have on!” she exclaimed +impulsively. “Yellow is such a lovely color.” +</p> +<p> +“Do you think so?” said Lois. “This is an old thing +that I mended to wear because Justin always likes it. I +do wish he’d come.” She rose and walked restlessly to the +window. “I’m worried about him.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia, still looking, and pleased that the +remark bore out her fancy. But she wondered; married +women in Balderville looked different—the hot Southern +sun had burned the color out of their cheeks, and the gowns +they mended were of cotton, not of yellow silk; this fresh +youthfulness and self-sufficiency both attracted and repelled, +it seemed so beyond her. Her heart bounded at +the thought that Aunt Theodosia had sent money for her +clothes as well as for her music lessons. +</p> +<p> +She did not resist the second attempt to send her to bed, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74'></a>74</span> +although Justin was still absent. Lois had brought her all +the things she needed in the absence of her wrecked luggage, +and kissed her good night with tenderness, saying, +“I hope you’ll be very happy here, Dosia,” and she answered, +“Thank you so much for having me.” +</p> +<p> +In spite of her helpless fatigue, she lay awake for a long +time in her tiny room. The brass bed, the polished floor +with the crimson rug on it, the dainty dressing-table, had +all seemed charmingly luxurious and like a book, but now +that she was in darkness, she only saw vividly a pair of +sparkling eyes looking into hers, and caught the sound +of a kind, half-mocking voice. Every word of the conversation +repeated itself again to her excited mind; it was +delightful to remember, because she had acquitted herself +so well; if she had replied stupidly she would have died of +vexation now. How clever he had been, and how really considerate!—for +she was glad to think that he had said foolish +things to her to keep her from breaking down. +</p> +<p> +“Do I look like a person of whom you would approve?” +</p> +<p> +“I haven’t considered the subject.” She flashed the answer +back again, and laughed, with her cheek glowing on the +pillow. Why had Lois spoken of him so strangely? She +vainly strove to fathom the significance of the words, +which she resented, although they had coincided with an instinctive +feeling she had that he was not at all the kind +of man she would ever want to marry. She had already +taken that provisionary leap into a mythical future which +is one of the perfunctory attitudes of maidenhood. +</p> +<p> +But who wanted to think of marrying now, anyway? +That was something so far off that it seemed like the end +of all things to Dosia, who at present only innocently +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75'></a>75</span> +desired plenty of emotions to live upon—costlier living than +she knew, poor child! The very instinct that warned her +against it added a heightened charm to the perilous pleasure. +And the other man—Mr. Sutton—had already sent +her flowers! Oh, this was life, life—the life she had read +of and longed for, where dark eyes looked at you and made +you feel how interesting you were; where you could have +pretty clothes, and look like other people, and be brilliant +and witty and sought after. She blushed with pleasure and +excitement. Then she said a little prayer, with palm +pressed to palm under the covers, and the glamour faded +away as a sweet and pure feeling welled up from the clear +depths of her heart. Her hand was once more held in +safety. In her drowsiness, it was as if she had lifted her +soft cheek to be kissed. +</p> +<p> +To the eager inquiries of Lois, Justin answered that he +had had his dinner long before and wanted nothing. +</p> +<p> +He asked if she and the children were all right,—his +usual question,—and she waited until he had dropped down +in the arm-chair in the sitting-room up-stairs, after +changing his shoes for slippers, before questioning him. +Then she sat down by him and asked: +</p> +<p> +“Well, how was it?” +</p> +<p> +She spoke with eagerness, holding one of his hands in +hers tenderly, although it hung limp after the first strong, +responsive clasp. +</p> +<p> +“The fire was out before I got there.” +</p> +<p> +“Do they know how it started?” +</p> +<p> +“Not yet.” +</p> +<p> +“Was the place burned much?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76'></a>76</span> +</p> +<p> +“No, not much.” +</p> +<p> +“Did it do any damage to the machinery?” +</p> +<p> +“Some.” +</p> +<p> +Lois looked at him in despair. +</p> +<p> +“Aren’t you going to tell me <em>anything</em>?” +</p> +<p> +“There really isn’t anything to tell, dear.” He strove +to speak with attention. “You know just about as much +of it all as I do.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, but I’m so sorry for you! Will it put you back +any?” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose so.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, <em>dear</em>!” she moaned helplessly. “Isn’t it too bad! +If only you had not been obliged to take that journey! +Do you suppose it would have happened if you had stayed +at home?” +</p> +<p> +“I really can’t tell. The fire might have been discovered +earlier; it started at noon, when most of the clerks were +out at lunch.” +</p> +<p> +“I see. But no one can hold you responsible.” +</p> +<p> +“I am responsible for everything. If you do not mind, +Lois, I’ll go to bed. I’m tired; I didn’t get any sleep last +night.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, of course.” She smoothed his hair with her fingers +in remorseful tenderness, leaning against him, with +her laces touching his cheek. “Such a long, long, tiresome +journey! It’s such a pity you had to go.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, well, I had to, and that’s the end of it. Don’t +let’s talk about it any more. I hope that poor girl gets +some sleep to-night; she needs it. She can’t hear us, can +she?” +</p> +<p> +“No. Didn’t you think she was sweet?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77'></a>77</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, she seemed nice enough; she’s pretty—a little +stupid, perhaps.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, poor Dosia!” said Lois, “stupid! I should think +she might have been, after all she had gone through. But +then, you’re so used to my cleverness!” She looked up at +him with provocative eyes, into which he smiled faintly, in +recognition of what was expected of him; then he said, +with a sudden appealing change of tone, “I’m <em>very</em> tired, +Lois.” +</p> +<p> +She kissed him good night tenderly, with magnanimous +concession to his unresponsiveness; there was no room for +her in his thoughts to-night, and she had been so longing +to see him! But she would tell him all about it to-morrow. +</p> +<p> +Justin laid his head upon the pillow, but his eyes burned +into the darkness; there was a proud and bitter disappointment +at his heart, even while reason adjusted his +losses to their proper place. Before him in disagreeable +force came the face of Leverich, and it was not the face of +a man to whom one would care to make excuse or from +whom one would challenge reproof; he could see the heavy +jowl, the piercing eyes, the half-pompous, half-shrewd expression +of one who respected nothing but success. This +tangle up of the machinery, unusual and costly in its parts +and appointments—Heaven only knew what far-reaching +complications the delay of its repair might occasion! Justin +had seen only too well in others how a false step at the +first may count. +</p> +<p> +Whether or not Dosia and the typometer were united in +their destinies, they had at least one thing in common—they +were both embarked upon perilous ways. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78'></a>78</span>CHAPTER SIX</h2> +<p> +Joseph Leverich, however, proved unexpectedly +kind and sympathetic when Justin approached +him on the latter’s return from the West. Justin +had written to him, and then had been incidentally reënforced +by the assistance of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. Bullen, +the foreman, was versed in practical knowledge of the machinery, +and how to go to work about repairs; different +portions had to be sent for to all parts of the country. +Justin pored over catalogues, and checked off and figured, +and tried to find ready-made substitutes wherever he could +for those they ordinarily manufactured for the typometer. +Here Cater, who had worked up gradually into the manufacturing +of his own machine, was of great use. +</p> +<p> +“You never can find anything just as you want it,” he +conceded, encouragingly, to Justin, “but you can whittle +off here and there, and make it do. I had to get along that +way at first. You can manage pretty well, only there isn’t +any real certainty to it. I got sort of weary”—he pronounced +it “weery”—“of sending for steel bars to fit, +and then getting a consignment of ’em just two sizes too +large, with a polite note saying that they were out of what +I wanted, but thought it was best, at any rate, to send +me what they had. You don’t want to buck up against +that kind of thing too often—not for your own good. So +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79'></a>79</span> +I started up the machinery, and even that goes back on +you sometimes.” +</p> +<p> +“Mine has,” said Justin grimly. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I don’t mean that way—it’s in the way it turns +out the stuff. You get so cussed mi-nute nothing seems +quite right to you. You get kinder soured even on the material +in the rough; the grain is wrong in this, and that +hasn’t been worked sufficient, and that t’other weighs too +light.” +</p> +<p> +“How long do you guarantee the typometer for?” +</p> +<p> +“For a year.” +</p> +<p> +“We stake out ours for two,—go you one better,—but +it’s all rot. You can’t guarantee nothin’ in this world; I +know that isn’t grammar, but it kinder seems to mean +more’n if ’twas. You can’t guarantee nothin’, not unless +you could have the making of the raw material, and then +you couldn’t. And you can’t guarantee your workmen, especially +when you have to keep changing; I reckon human +imperfection’s got to step in somewhere. Talk of skilled +labor! That’s what takes the blood out of a man, the everlasting +wrench of trying to get ‘skilled labor’ that is +skilled. Some of it is so loose-jawed it can’t even chew +straight.” +</p> +<p> +“You’re a pessimist,” said Justin, smiling. +</p> +<p> +The other broke into a responsive grin. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I reckon that’s so; but I don’t even guarantee to +be that, steady. Sometimes I get kinder mushy and pleasant, +and think the world ain’t a closed-up oyster,—Shakespeare,—but +just nice soft cream-cheese that’s ready to be +spooned up when you want it. Those are the sort of spells +a man’s got to look out for, or he’s likely to find himself +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80'></a>80</span> +up against the rocks, without even an oyster-shell in +sight.” +</p> +<p> +“That’s a bad position,” said Justin, and Cater nodded +confirmatively. After a moment he said: +</p> +<p> +“Well, I’ll guarantee <em>that</em>; I’ve been there.” As he was +going, he asked: “How’s Miss Dosia? Pretty well shook +up, I suppose.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, she’s all right now,” said Justin. “She’s been resting +for a couple of days. You must come and see her; she +will be glad to see a face from home.” +</p> +<p> +“I reckon I’ll wait awhile,” said Cater, “till a face from +home’s more of a novelty. She ain’t hankering for a sight +of mine now.” And, indeed, Dosia, on being informed of +the prospect, showed no great enthusiasm. Balderville and +the people there were so far away in the past that she had +lost connection with them. +</p> +<p> +And, after all, Leverich met Justin’s explanation cordially. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, you couldn’t help a thing like that,” he said. +“Don’t know yet how the fire started, do they? Accidents +are bound to occur when you least look for them. The loss +was fully covered, wasn’t it?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m glad the orders came in, anyway. Just bluff those +fellows off a bit—tell ’em you’ve got a lot more orders on +and <em>they’ve</em> got to wait; that’s the way to do it.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, I know that; the only thing I want is to be +sure, myself, when the orders can be filled. I’m trying to +get the machinery at work as soon as possible, and we’re +sending all over the country for what we need. Cater—he’s +the manufacturer of the timoscript, across the street, has +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81'></a>81</span> +told me of a place where they make small steel bars such +as we use. I’ve brought the catalogue with me. I sent for +a consignment of them yesterday; Bullen says they’ll do.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, that’s all right,” said Leverich. “Oh, you’ll get +along, you’ll get along! I knew you wouldn’t sit down and +wait until I came home to get on your feet. Don’t mind +drawing on us for extra money if you need it—and we +want to get in for the export trade. What do you think +of this?” He took some papers out of his desk and began +explaining them to Justin, who listened attentively before +making suggestions. His mind, although not unusually +quick, was singularly clear and comprehensive; he +brought to Leverich’s aid, if not the intelligence of the +expert, something which is often harder to get, and which +Leverich was experienced enough to appreciate at its full +value—the intelligence which sees the matter from the +standpoint of the big outer world, and not only from the +inner radius of a little circle. Justin’s vision was not, as +yet, impeded by the technicalities and preconceived opinions +which often obstruct the fresh point of view even in +very clever men whose talent it is to see clearly. +</p> +<p> +“We haven’t made any mistake in getting you,” he said +to Justin, as they parted. +</p> +<p> +The belated fifty dollars were carried to Lois that night, +with a subdued joy in the glad provision of more to come. +They were still to live on as little as they could, but the +idea of the limit stretched to include those extra fives +and tens whose expenditure was in the interest of true +economy. +</p> +<p> +For a few days after her arrival Theodosia had kept her +bed, in a reaction from the strain of the journey that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82'></a>82</span> +made her too weak to care to do anything but lie in a +half-drowsing and peaceful condition, hearing the sound +of the children’s voices as if they were very far off. Lois +brought up the dainty meals herself, and talked the little +talk women use on such occasions, and at four o’clock each +afternoon Zaidee appeared with a tiny lacquered tray on +which stood an egg-shell cup filled with fragrant tea, and +a biscuit, and watched Dosia, as she ate and drank, with +benignant satisfaction. The younger Reginald was still +afraid and was lured near her bedside only to rush off +again; but with Zaidee there was a loving comradeship. +</p> +<p> +It was well that Dosia had even lost interest in Mr. +Barr’s call the next afternoon, for he did not come, and +afterwards she grew ashamed that she had harbored the +interest at all. Mr. Sutton, after sending more flowers, had +departed for Boston. +</p> +<p> +But, after this convalescence, by the end of the week +Dosia emerged, eager, alert, with pink cheeks and gleaming +eyes, having passed through some subtle transformation, +and bent on pleasure. She was rather silent, indeed, +except when carried away by sudden excitement, but she +was rapturously happy at the prospect of a concert and +a card-party and a large bazaar to be given soon; the +concert and the bazaar were both for charity, and she was +already engaged to serve at the flower-booth in the latter; +there was to be dancing after the closing of both entertainments. +</p> +<p> +Clothes were the first requisite, after a definite arrangement +had been made to begin the music lessons in two +weeks’ time. Every little preparation was a source of delight +to Dosia, who thought Lois wonderful as a designer +and adapter of fashions suitable to her purse, and the older +woman threw herself into this work with a sort of fierce +ardor. +</p> +<div><a name='i082' id='i082'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i005' id='i005'></a> +<img src="images/i082.jpg" alt="Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83'></a>83</span></div> +<p> +Dosia had never seen so much ready money spent in her +life, and had never heard so much talk about it—why +should she, in a place where no one bought anything, where +long-outstanding bills for tiny sums were paid for mostly +in lumber, or chickens, or cotton? Here the price of daily +living and clothing and amusements was one of the stock +topics in the intimate round of suburban dwellers. Women +came to visit her cousin Lois who at times made it their +sole subject of conversation, incidentally submitting the +very garments they wore to appraisal, for the pleasure of +springing an unexpected price in her face like a jack-in-the-box, +at which she was to jump admiringly. Lois declaimed +against the habit, even while she sometimes fell a +victim to it, and Dosia found herself drawn into the same +ways, after a delightful revel in shopping for new clothes +with Aunt Theodosia’s money. The chief requisite in any +article bought was that it should look to be worth more +than was paid for it. +</p> +<p> +What most impressed Dosia in the big city was, not the +size of it, nor the height of the buildings, nor the magnificence +of the shops—she accepted these wonders, indeed, +with the provoking acquiescence which dwellers in outlying +sections of the country display when confronted with +the reality they have seen so often depicted. It was the +crowd, the rush of the people, the tense expression on the +faces, that struck her with amazement; everyone looked +in grim haste to get somewhere, and forged ahead untiringly +with set and definite purpose, as if there were not a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84'></a>84</span> +minute to lose. Dosia had been used to sauntering aimlessly, +and to seeing everyone else saunter. There was no +hurry at Balderville, except in Northern people on their +first arrival, and they soon lost it. Dosia clung to Lois’ +arm on their first excursion, but the next time she suddenly +dropped the arm and forged ahead breathlessly, +being caught, as she was crossing a street, by a policeman +just in time to escape being run over by an electric car. +When Lois came up to her, horrified and indignant, the +girl was laughing in wild exhilaration. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, it’s such fun!” she said. “I’m going to walk like +the other people after this; but I’ll stop when I get to +the crossings, so you needn’t mind.” People turned around +to look at the pretty girl with the hair blown back from +her face, standing still in the street and laughing. The +excitement was all part of the first intoxication of the new +life. +</p> +<p> +In the intervals of going to town, there were calls to be +received, some from married women, and some from young +girls who were asked especially to meet Dosia, and who +expressed pleasure that she was to spend the winter with +them. She was asked to join a book club and a card club, +and to pour tea at the next meeting of the Junior Guild—proceedings +that at the first blush appeared radiantly +festive. It was understood that she was to be of the inner +circle. +</p> +<p> +When the other functions took place, Dosia was a success +both at the concert and the bazaar; a score of youths +were introduced to her, with whom she laughed and +chatted and promenaded and danced; she danced every +time. The society of a new place is apt to appear extraordinarily +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85'></a>85</span> +attractive until one begins to resolve it into its +component parts, when it is seen to differ but little from +that one has hitherto known. Of these dancing youths, +Dosia was yet to realize that half of them were younger +even than she; some who seemed to take a great fancy for +her were the bores whom all the other girls got rid of, +if possible; others were just a little below the grade of +real refinement; the really nice fellows were not there at +all, with the exception of a stray few, and those who were +attendant on their fiancées. Just at present the rhythm of +the music and the joy of motion were all in all to Dosia. +Her honest and artless pleasure shone so plainly from her +face that for the moment it was a compelling attraction in +itself—for the moment, as neither good looks, nor honesty, +nor the artlessness of joy in one’s own pleasure, serve +as a power of fascination: it takes a subtler quality, combined +of both sympathy and reserve—something always +given, something always withheld. +</p> +<p> +This happiness of healthy youth, which as yet depended +on no individual note, could last but such a brief time! +When she looked back upon it, it seemed like a little sunny, +transfigured place that somebody else had lived in—the +Dosia who was just glad. +</p> +<p> +Lois watched her enjoyment, half preoccupied, yet smilingly, +pleased with the girl’s prettiness and success. Dosia +thought, “How kind she is!” and yet, when another +woman came to her and said, with warm impulsiveness, +“My dear child, it’s a pleasure to look at you!” she felt +that she had now the one thing she had missed. +</p> +<p> +She went to the last evening of the bazaar clad in a +floating blue gown that matched her eyes. The curve of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86'></a>86</span> +her arms, bare to the elbow, the way the tendrils of her +hair fell across her forehead, her sudden dimpling smile, +the glad, unconscious motions of her beautiful youth, +would have made her, to those who loved, the personification +of darling maidenhood, with that haunting tinge of +pathos which is the inheritance of the woman-child. +</p> +<p> +She sold more flowers than any other girl at the bazaar +that night, and there she met Mr. Sutton, who had, indeed, +called upon her, but at a time when she was out. This +guaranteed man was rather short, stocky, and common-place-looking, +with a large, round, beardless face, and a +long, newly shaven upper lip. But his appearance made +no difference; Dosia’s radiant happiness flowed over on +him with impartial delight, and if she sold many flowers, +it was he who bought most of them, presenting them to +her again afterwards, so that one corner of the room was +heaped up with her spoils, and her arms were full of roses. +She trailed around the crowded room with him in her blue +gown, as he had insisted on her advice in buying, and +received gifts of books and candy in the interests of +organized charity. It was like being in the Arabian Nights +to have inconsequent gifts showered upon one in this way, +but she succeeded in dissuading him from offering her a +large green and pink flowered plaque of local art, and +was relieved when he gave it to the lady who had it for +sale. +</p> +<p> +“A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden,” +he said apologetically. “Each lady makes me promise—weeks +beforehand—to come and buy from her especial +table. If they would only have something I <em>could</em> want,”—he +looked at her humorously,—“it would be easy enough +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87'></a>87</span> +to keep my word. Why don’t they ever sell things a man +can use? But look for yourself, Miss Linden—it’s charity +to help me out.” He paused irresolutely by a yellow-draped +table. “Might you like some sewing-bags, now, or +this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of these—plush +arrangements?” +</p> +<p> +“No!” said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, “I +mightn’t.” +</p> +<p> +“Or a doll, now?” He had strayed a step farther on. +“Would you like a doll for Mrs. Alexander’s little girl, +and some of these charming toys?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, how <em>lovely</em> of you!” said Dosia, touched in the +sweetest part of her nature, and turning up to him a face +of such childlike and fervent gratitude that it was like a +little rift of heavenly blue let in upon the scene. George +Sutton’s seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He +was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty +girl; it had been his normal condition ever since he first +grew up, when a girl had been a forbidden distraction in +an existence devoted to earning and living on eight dollars +a week; when he slept in the office, and studied Spanish in +a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his +life to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself +at liberty to give any time to society; he had always +cherished an old-fashioned idea that a man should be able +to surround a woman with luxuries before asking her to +marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret +that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was +hardly a young woman in the place who had not been the +recipient of the ardor of his glances, as well as of more +substantial tokens of his regard; his sentimental remarks +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88'></a>88</span> +had been confided by one girl to another. But further than +this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. +Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate +it permanently on one person. George Sutton’s heart performed +the pleasing miracle of always burning, yet never +being consumed. Under all his amatory sentiment was the +cool streak of common sense that showed so strongly in +his business relations, and kept him from committing himself +to the permanent selection of a partner who might +prove, after all, to have no real fitness for the part. He +was fond of saying that he had never made a bad bargain. +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his +opened up a sweet vista of domestic joys. She did not +notice his growing silence as she gayly accepted the engines +and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for the +young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself +to be deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off +again with him, to be fed on ices, and have chances taken +for her in everything; she did not notice that she was the +recipient of his whole attention, although everyone else +smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time +until the dancing began. +</p> +<p> +Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched +her. He had not learned to dance in the days of his youth, +and heroic effort since had been of no avail. He had, +indeed, after humiliating and anguished perseverance, succeeded +in learning the correct mathematical movements of +the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how +to turn, without tuition; but to take the steps and turn +as he did so he could not have done to save his immortal +soul. If the offering up of pigeons or of lambs could have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89'></a>89</span> +propitiated the gods who presided over the Terpsichorean +art, Mr. Sutton’s domestic altars would have been reeking +with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible +heart as when they were whirling past him to the +inspiriting dance music. It seemed really pathetic not to +be able to do it too! He would have liked in the present +instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized +his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands +and jumping up and down the room with her, after a +fashion he had practiced as a little boy. +</p> +<p> +It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson +Barr standing in the doorway by one of the booths, with +his overcoat on and his hat held in his hand. He was not +looking at her, but talking to another man. She watched +him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and +rather wondered that she had thought him attractive; he +looked thinner and darker than she had thought, and more +worn, and he had more than ever the peculiar effect of +being unlike other people—his overcoat hung carelessly +on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the +other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat +the impression of an Oriental in civilized clothing. +She disclaimed to herself the fact that he had lingered in +her thought at all. +</p> +<p> +He had been the subject of Lois’ conversation on one +of the afternoons of Dosia’s convalescence, and she had +since heard him spoken of by others, and always in the +same tone. When she asked particularly about him, she +was met by the casual answer, “Oh, everybody knows what +Lawson is.” He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, +by everyone; but he carried no weight, and there seemed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90'></a>90</span> +to be social limitations which it was an understood thing +that he was not to pass. +</p> +<p> +Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little +country town of his birth with a past such as places of +the kind are too fatally apt to fasten upon the boys who +grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, Heaven +only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barr’s idle +youth had been subject; and nobody in his new home had +cared to hear. Scandal may be interesting, but one instinctively +avoids filth. It was an understood thing, when +he first came to Woodside, that his brother-in-law, Joseph +Leverich, had lifted him out of “a scrape” in response +to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy +back with him to get him away from village temptations +and substitute the more bracing conditions of city life, +where entertainment that was not vicious could be had. +</p> +<p> +The experiment had apparently worked well; in the +eight years which Lawson Barr had passed in Woodside, +no one had anything bad to tell of him. He was more inclined +to the society of men than of women, and shared +the imputation of being fond of what is called “a good +time”; but he was never seen really under the influence of +liquor. Shy in general company at first, he became rather +a favorite afterwards in a certain way; he was fond of +sports, and was very kind to women and children; he was +also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the +piano when he was in the mood; he was one of those gifted +people who can play, after their own fashion, on any instrument. +When he felt pleasantly inclined, no one was +more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He +had become engaged to a girl in good standing, after a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91'></a>91</span> +summer flirtation. The girl had come there on a visit, and +the engagement lasted only until her return and the +revelation of his prospects to parental inspection. +</p> +<p> +For Lawson never had any prospects—or, at least, they +never solidly materialized. He never kept his positions for +more than a few months at a time. There was always a +different reason for this, more or less unimportant on each +occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers whom +he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated +by his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic +in finding new openings for him, ready to +champion hotly his merits against that most galling of all +criticism, which consists in the simple statement of adverse +facts. +</p> +<p> +“You will never be able to make anything out of him,” +was a sentence which his relays of friends were sure to +hand on to one another. +</p> +<p> +One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep +the golf-grounds in order—a position, however, which he +filled in such a well-bred manner, and with so many niceties +of consideration for everyone’s comfort, that to have him +around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, +and the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket +once more and started going in to town mornings +as one of them. +</p> +<p> +Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the +village, and part of the time he stayed with the Leverichs; +rumor said that Leverich alternately turned him out or +welcomed him, as he lost or renewed patience, but the +relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always appeared +to be friendly. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92'></a>92</span> +</p> +<p> +Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing +to forget the youthful faults of the handsome, clever +boy, and let him in on probation to the outer edges of +it, it was a singular fact that after all these years +of apparent respectability he had made no further +progress. +</p> +<p> +There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences +with a certain inner purity untouched; with an +added reverence for goodness, and a strength of character +all the greater for the sheer effort of retrieval; whose eyes +are forever ashamed when they look back on the sins that +were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the +painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there +had been, perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison +lodged, to a deterioration, however delicate, of the whole +tissue. It is strange—or, rather, it is not strange—that, +in spite of respectability of life, with nothing whatever +that was tangible to contravene it, this should have been +thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what +felt of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one +he does, and the combined judgment of the members of an +intelligent suburban community is very keen as to character, +no matter how it differs in regard to actions. The +standard of morality in such a section is high—it may indulge +occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a +lower scale, but in social relations the lesser order must +go. “Shadiness” is damning. Lawson was not exactly +“shady,” but he might be. No girl was ever supposed to +fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too +intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. +Strangers whom he impressed favorably always asked, as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93'></a>93</span> +Dosia did, “Why, what has he <em>done</em>?” And received the +same reply Lois gave her: “Oh, nothing.” +</p> +<p> +“Isn’t he—nice?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He can’t seem +to make a living; I don’t know why—he’s clever enough. +There’s really nothing against him though, except that +he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that when +he goes away on trips he—drinks. But Justin wouldn’t +like me to say it; he hates to have people talked about in +this way. Still—it’s just as well that you should know all +about him.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, +yet in reality mystified. She felt at once indignant +at the imputations thrown on Mr. Barr, and yet a +little ashamed of having liked him, as something in bad +taste. +</p> +<p> +As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped +that he wouldn’t come and speak to her at all; but the +hope was vain, for, without apparently seeing her, he +made his way through the room, at the cessation of the +dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers. +</p> +<p> +It is in one of George MacDonald’s stories that Curdie, +the hero, tests everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which +unconsciously reveals the true nature to his magic sense; +claws and paws and hoofs and the serpent’s writhe are +plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia involuntarily +tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand +that had held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction +was strong within her that some day she would meet and +recognize her helper by that remembered touch, if in no +other way. Mr. Barr’s hand was smooth, with long fingers, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94'></a>94</span> +and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away +quickly, with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met +his coolly appraising eyes, that she had done something +school-girlish and ill-bred. +</p> +<p> +“You did not come to see me, after all,” she said, when +the first greeting was over, and could have bitten out her +tongue for saying it. +</p> +<p> +“I regretted very much not being able to,” he replied, +in a tone of conventional politeness. “I went West the +next day, and have only just returned. You have been enjoying +yourself, I hope?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, immensely,” said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; +“I couldn’t have had a better time, possibly.” Her +eyes roved toward the people in front of them with studied +inattention, although she was strangely conscious in every +tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side. +</p> +<p> +“You have been to town, I suppose?” he pursued. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, indeed, several times.” +</p> +<p> +“Would you care to come out in the corridor and +walk?” he asked abruptly, as the music struck up again. +“I’m not in evening dress, you see; I only returned from +my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer to dance?” +he added. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I prefer to dance!” said Dosia, with the first natural +inflection her voice had possessed in speaking to him. +</p> +<p> +“Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow +coming over for you. Good night.” +</p> +<p> +“You are not going to leave <em>now</em>?” exclaimed Dosia, +with disappointment too quick to be concealed. +</p> +<p> +“In a few moments; I may not see you again.” He did +not offer his hand this time, but bowed and was gone. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95'></a>95</span> +</p> +<p> +It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was +a good partner, and Dosia’s feet were light, yet, for the +first time that evening, she did not feel the buoyancy of +dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they circled around +the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled +of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations +were being torn from the walls, and cloaks and +boxes routed out from under the tables. The receivers of +money were busily counting up the piles of silver. A few +children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the +smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a +bench, while his mother lamented her husband’s prolonged +absence to everyone who passed. Each minute the crowd +in the room thinned out more and more, going out by twos +and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the floor +and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But +the dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the +clock struck twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a +cry of protest arose: +</p> +<p> +“One more waltz—just one more! This is the best part +of the evening. Lawson—Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! +Ah, no, don’t say you’re too tired—play!” +</p> +<p> +Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn +from Dosia’s waist, looking questioningly down at her. +</p> +<p> +“I think I’d better go,” she murmured uncertainly, +loath to depart, yet with a glance toward Lois, who, with +Justin now standing beside her, was plainly expectant of +departure. Lois had had no dancing—yet she was young, +too. But at that moment the music struck up again—there +was a crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to +which Dosia found herself gliding into motion ere she was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96'></a>96</span> +aware. She knew before she looked that Lawson Barr was +at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the keys, seemed +remote and sad. +</p> +<p> +The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows +had been opened for air, revealing the shining of the stars +far up above in the bluish-black sky; below it a heap of +tall white chrysanthemums stood massed to be taken away. +There were barely a dozen couples on the polished floor. +These had caught the white fire of a dance played as Dosia +had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing +to it that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in +unison. The dancers flew by on swift and swifter feet, with +paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. Dosia was dancing with +Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which she leaned, +but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr +that she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious +air that swept them past the tinkling shivers of icy +falls into a white, white garden of moon-flowers, with the +silver stars above. From the flowers to the stars she swung +in that long, entrancing strain—from the flowers to the +stars! From the stars—ah, whither went that flight of +ecstasy—this endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down +to the flowers again now—back to the stars; beyond, beyond—oh, +whither? +</p> +<p> +A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. +It brought Dosia to the earth, awake and trembling, with +parted lips and panting breath. But her eyes had the +wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the flowers, +as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching +the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had +slipped unnoticed from her hand, she walked across the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97'></a>97</span> +floor with Billy. Her loveliness, as she smiled, brought a +pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so plainly of the +evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the +future possession of some dearest lover, who could never +know his loss. +</p> +<p> +“I hope I haven’t let you stay too long, Dosia,” she +said practically, and Justin hurried her into her wraps, +after she had given Billy the rose he asked for. Everybody +was leaving at once in couples, laughing and chattering, +with the lights turned out behind them as they went. +</p> +<p> +The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with +Justin and Lois was a side view of Lawson Barr going +down the stone steps, carrying in his arms the child who +had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The light head +rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs +hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, +voluble in thanks, with the child’s cap in her hand. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98'></a>98</span>CHAPTER SEVEN</h2> +<p> +Mr. William Snow was at present in that +preparatory stage of existence known locally as +“going to Stevens’”; in other words, he was a +daily attendant at the institute of that name, situate on +the heights of Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, +and was destined to become one of that army of young +electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to over-run +the earth. He wended his way to the college by train +each morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking +the convenient trolley. His arms were always full of books, +from which he studied fitfully as he journeyed. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother +and sisters admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, +narrow shoulders, and a small round face of such an open, +infantile character that his mother often averred that it +had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and that a +frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the +same effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to +typify the purity of his nature, as seen through this +countenance so fair and fresh, so blue-eyed and guileless, +accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his round +white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon +her William’s ingenuousness and his freedom from the +usual faults of youth in a way that sometimes taxed the +gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, Billy was a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99'></a>99</span> +young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in +short clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as +much as the limits of circumstance would allow. No one +could tell how he had suffered from his mother’s exalted +belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with naughty +boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; +she had accompanied him to school to point with tense +indignation at the injuries he had received from stones +thrown by playmates at whom he had had the first convincing +“shy”; she had complained untiringly to parents +by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities +offered to the clothing and the person of her unoffending +son. If Billy hadn’t been the whole-souled and genial boy +that he was, he would have been made an outlaw and an +object of derision among his kind, but it was an understood +thing that, far from being responsible for his +mother’s attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted +obedience. A certain loyalty to his parent, and also the +tongue-tied position of youth toward authority, made it +impossible for him fully to state to her how far below her +estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with +the meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow. +</p> +<p> +The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently +experiencing the tender passion since the age +of seven, she regarded only as an additional proof of his +gentle disposition. She would have liked him to be always +in the society of girls instead of those rude boys. +</p> +<p> +With added years Billy’s outward demeanor had +changed in his daily journey toward education. He no +longer had scrimmages in the train with school-fellows, +in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare; +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100'></a>100</span> +he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on +the ferry-boat, or was chided for outrageous noisiness by +long-suffering commuters. But the happy expression of +his countenance was usually such a fixture that its marked +absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers +one day in the latter part of January. His face was +gloomy and averted; he would not talk. To cheerful questions +as to what had disagreed with him, or whether he +was “up against it again” at Stevens, his replies were +unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely +alone. The change had, in truth, come over him since entering +the car, and was caused by the sight of two figures in +a seat ahead of him. +</p> +<p> +The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their +conversation had a peculiar air of absorption which +seemed to make them alone together in the crowd. Billy +could see only the backs of this couple, save when one +turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve +of a cheek and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the +bend of an aquiline nose and a dark mustache—the nose +and the mustache turned sideways much oftener than the +fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a pink +throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head +and fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in +her hand, and Billy swore under his breath. +</p> +<p> +When the train had rolled into the station, he went with +the other passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house +to see—yes, they were going over the same ferry together, +he still bending toward her as they walked, she +with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one +unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, “The +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101'></a>101</span> +gall of him!” and walked away to the humiliating trolley +which showed that he was still “going to Stevens’.” If +he had been out of bondage, he would have been quick to +follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and +show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate +duet. +</p> +<p> +It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain +days his accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected +that he no longer whistled cheerily all the time he was +dressing, but only when he heard her foot upon the stairs; +and although he still chaffed his admiring sisters at +dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the jesting +that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. +He found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. +His mother brought him pills which he refused to take, +towering above her—she was a little woman—tense and +aloof. When she taxed him with having something on his +mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her go +no further. +</p> +<p> +“It is nothing to do with myself,” he conceded, with the +spirit of a man looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The +woman in her bowed to it as she went down-stairs, with pride +in him rampant in her heart, to deliver her report to the +two sisters waiting below. +</p> +<p> +The Snow family had been settled in the town from its +beginning as a suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow +having died—after losing money largely on his real-estate +investments there—twelve years later, when Billy was an +infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large +taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in +the place, rich and poor, and were consequently regarded +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102'></a>102</span> +somewhat in the light of a directory; the woman by the +day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man or boy +could always be achieved by applying to them, for they +had an invariable acquaintance with respectable persons +temporarily forced into filling these positions. They themselves, +while adding to their own finances in various ways, +neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their affairs could +interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small +old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall +nearly level with the street; and the little low-ceiled +parlor and sitting-room, with their narrow doorways and +slightly uneven floors, were crowded with large mahogany +and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and +Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, +from the cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the +ornamental hanging calendar of the past season. In the +autumn the ladies potted plants with such accumulative +energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of +damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and +spikes and flat blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly +where to sit without encroaching perilously on these; Billy’s +friends always dropped first into a certain chair and rocked +into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on the marble-topped +table behind. +</p> +<p> +The Snows had the recognized position in society of being +Asked to Everything. When they went to entertainments, +it was in the dark, quiet garments of every-day life, +or the one often remodeled state robe belonging to each, +irrespective of what other people wore. Their circumstances +and their birth were too well known to need pretense. +</p> +<p> +Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103'></a>103</span> +twenty-seven, tall like her brother, and with a fair, babyish +face like his. It seems to be the rule in the pages of fiction, +even at the present day, to depict unmarried women of this +age as both feeling and looking no longer young—as a +matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely distinguishable +from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. +Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young +persons who grow up late, and become graceful and natural +in society only after long custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, +she had usually been mistaken for sixteen. She was +her brother’s favorite, secretly aiding and abetting him in +many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats +for him now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed +as her elder, in view of his height and large experience. +</p> +<p> +The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older +woman, dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent +nerve-prostrations and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain +sanity and strength of mind hidden beneath an accumulation +of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat by +a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming +plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the +persons who went up and down the street, the number of +oranges bought out of a cart, and the frequency of the +meetings of two servants over a boundary fence—incidents +of note in themselves without further connection. She +seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, +but if one were strong enough to speak only to the truth +that was in her, she could answer. She was honest and she +was loyal; she knew a friend. She had worked hard for her +mother in her early youth—that little mother who now +looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104'></a>104</span> +from her interview with William, and sat down by her +daughter to say, in a tone of the mother who believes no +secret is hid from her: “William won’t tell me what’s the +matter, but I know it’s something to do with that girl at +the Alexanders’. Willie is growing up so fast!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden,” said Miss Bertha, +in comfortable corroboration. “That’s been going on for +some weeks.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps +she’s snubbed him in some way.” +</p> +<p> +“No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her +skating Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, +after all, it’s just being in love that upsets him.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I really think that’s all.” +</p> +<p> +Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed +it out with slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in +a thin white cloth. The daylight was beginning to go. +</p> +<p> +“He’s got a rose she gave him,—never mind how I +know,—and he keeps it wrapped up in tissue”—she pronounced +it “tisher”—“paper in his waistcoat pocket. He +leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his clothes. +And Ada says—you know that picture in the magazine +that we all said looked so like Miss Linden? He’s got it in +a little frame. Ada says that it tumbles out from underneath +his pillow once in a while when she’s taking the covers off; +I suppose the child puts it there at night and forgets it +in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again when +she makes up the bed, as if she’d overlooked it. He never +says anything, and of course she doesn’t, either.” +</p> +<p> +“I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously,” +said the mother, alarmed. She had known all this before, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105'></a>105</span> +but it was a fashion of the family to talk over and over +what they already knew. “I <em>hope</em> she will not take him +seriously.” +</p> +<p> +“Mother! They’re both so young.” Ada, who had been +leaning forward with her face in her hands and her chin +upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke for the first time. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that’s very well!” Mrs. Snow tossed her head as +one with experience. “He is, of course, nothing but a mere +boy at nineteen, but a girl of twenty is years older. When +a girl is twenty, she goes in society with women of <em>any</em> +age. I was married myself at eighteen—not that I should +wish either of my daughters to do so.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, you can feel safe about that, mother,” interpolated +Ada. +</p> +<p> +“William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not +blame any girl for being somewhat captivated by him; I +should be sorry if Miss Linden allowed her affections to +be engaged. She may not know that his career is mapped +out before him. William will not be in a position to marry +before he is thirty-six. William is——” +</p> +<p> +“The people are coming from the train,” interposed +Miss Bertha, waving back one thin hand to stop her +mother’s discourse—which she could have repeated backward—and +scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across +the street. +</p> +<p> +“Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, +come here. Mrs. Leverich has on her new furs—the ones +her husband gave her. Don’t they make her look stout? +There are the Brentons, I think that’s a bag of coffee he’s +carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square +ends—perhaps <em>she’s</em> been buying corsets; if not, it must +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106'></a>106</span> +be a bottle of whisky. And there—who is that? Oh, I thought +it was Mr. Alexander in a new coat; of course it’s too early +for him—they say he’s been making money hand over hand +lately. And here comes—why it’s George Sutton! Ada, +Ada, bow! he’s looking. He sees us waving—ah!” +</p> +<p> +There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared +on the cheeks of both sisters. +</p> +<p> +The mother murmured apprehensively, “They say <em>he</em> is +devoted to Miss Linden,” but neither answered. Ada had +benefited, like the other girls, by his attentions, she had +been given candy and flowers and made one in his theater-parties, +but it was the secret conviction of all three women +that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his +real devotion to Ada. The others were just a circle—she +was the particular one; and Heaven only knows how many +girls in this circle shared the same conviction. His smile and +nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that blotted out +all his preference for Miss Linden. +</p> +<p> +“You had better pull down the shade now,” said Mrs. +Snow, after a few minutes. “It’s time to light the lamp.” +</p> +<p> +“No, wait a moment—there’s another train in.” Miss +Bertha’s eyes pierced the gloom. “The Carpenter boys, +those new people in the Farley house, and that’s all. No, +there’s somebody ’way behind—I declare, it’s Miss Linden! +She’s ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at +first. I wonder she didn’t come on the train ahead. Who can +that be with her? Why—” there was a pause. “I suppose +he must have just happened to get off with her at the +station,” said Miss Bertha in an altered voice. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes; I’m sure that’s it,” said Ada. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107'></a>107</span>CHAPTER EIGHT</h2> +<p> +“What is all this that I hear about Dosia and +Lawson Barr?” asked Justin abruptly, one +evening when he and his wife were at home +alone together, a rather unusual occurrence now. Either +he was out, or there was company, or Dosia was sitting +with them by the table on which stood the reading-lamp. +Just now she was staying overnight with Miss Torrington, +at the other end of the town, “across the track,” +practicing for a concert. +</p> +<p> +Justin had dropped his collar-button that morning in +the process of dressing, and the small incident was productive +of unforeseen results. The hunt for it had delayed +him to a later train and a seat by Billy Snow. +</p> +<p> +“What is this I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? +They say she has been going in with him on the express +nearly every morning this month. She may have been +coming out with him, too, for all I know.” +</p> +<p> +“Who says so?” asked Lois, startled, but contemptuous. +</p> +<p> +“Billy, for one.” +</p> +<p> +“I do not see what business it is of his.” +</p> +<p> +“That hasn’t anything to do with it, Lois. As a matter +of fact, the boy wouldn’t have told me at all if I hadn’t +happened to sit with him to-day; he’s heard plenty of +remarks on it, though, and he’s cut up about it. They sat +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108'></a>108</span> +in front of us, some seats down, entirely oblivious of +everybody; it might have been their private car. It gave +me a start, I can tell you, when Billy said it was not the +first time. Has she said anything to you about it?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I think she has mentioned once or twice that she +had seen him on the train; I know he brought her home +one afternoon when she was late. But I haven’t paid any +particular attention; and, after all, there’s no harm in it.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no; there’s no <em>harm</em>, if you put it that way—only +she mustn’t do it. You know what I mean, Lois. Dosia +ought not to want to be with him.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose he comes and talks to her, and she doesn’t +know how to stop him.” +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps.” +</p> +<p> +“And you sent her out in his care that first night,” +said Lois. She felt unbelieving and combative; Lawson was +so unattractive to her that she could not conceive of his +being otherwise to any girl. +</p> +<p> +“Of course; and I would do so again under the same +circumstances—that was an emergency. But that’s very +different from making a practice of it. You must tell +Dosia, as long as she can’t see it herself. Let her get her +lesson changed to another hour and that will settle the +thing. Does she see much of Barr at other places?” +</p> +<p> +“No more than anybody else does; of course, he is more +or less around. But she knows <em>just</em> what he is like, Justin; +I told her all about him the first thing, and she hears it +from everybody. I am sure you are mistaken about her +liking his society, she told me once that it always made her +uncomfortable when he was near her. I really don’t think +you need be afraid of anything serious.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109'></a>109</span> +</p> +<p> +“All right, then. Probably a hint will be sufficient; but +don’t forget to give it, Lois. She is very much of a child +in some things.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, she is,” said Lois, resignedly. +</p> +<p> +This having Dosia with them had turned into one of +those burdens which people sometimes ignorantly assume +under a rose-colored impulse. It had seemed that it must +be necessarily a charming thing to have a young girl in +the house. But to have a young girl who was always practicing +on the piano, to the derangement of Reginald’s +sleep or to the inconvenience of visitors in the little drawing-room, +one who had to be specially considered in every +plan, and whose presence took away all privacy from Lois’ +daily companionship with Justin, was a doubtful pleasure. +Even this rainy evening with Justin and herself cozily +placed together was, after all, not hers, but invaded, if +not with the presence, at least with the disturbing thought +of Dosia. +</p> +<p> +There were all the little grievances which sound so infinitesimal, +and yet count up to so much when sympathy +is lacking. Dosia had lived in a Southern atmosphere and +in a home which had no regular rule. She invariably +wanted to play with the children at the wrong time, and +yet perhaps did not always offer to take care of them when +it would have been a help. If Lois was busy when Justin +came home at night, she would invariably find afterwards +that Dosia had swiftly poured into his ears—in nervous +loquacity at being alone with him—all the domestic happenings +of the day, so that every remark that Lois made +was answered by a “Yes; Dosia has already told me.” +These slight threads, which Lois had treasured up from +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110'></a>110</span> +which to spin a little web of interest for her beloved, +would thus be broken off short. Dosia also had a fashion +of ensconcing herself unthinkingly in Justin’s particular +seat by the lamp, in which case he sat patiently and uncomfortably +in an attitude out of the radius, or else went +up-stairs to the untidy sitting-room to read by himself, +leaving Lois, with her teeth on edge, to keep company +perforce with Dosia, to whom he would not allow Lois to +make protest, avowing that he was not inconvenienced at +all. He had an unvarying kindness and sense of justice regarding +the girl. But the family was like the bicycle of +concert-hall fame, built for two, and this third person +jarred its running qualities out of gear. +</p> +<p> +It was the night after Justin’s charge to her that Lois +nerved herself to broach the subject of Lawson to Dosia, +who was copying some music by the table. Both her hair +and her dress were arranged with a little new touch of +elegance, but there was a droop to the corners of her +mouth that had not been there before—a suggestion of +hardness or melancholy or defiance, it would have been +difficult to say which. +</p> +<p> +Justin was getting ready to go out, and Lois could +hear his footsteps as he walked up and down above. She +hated to begin, and her very reluctance gave a chill tone +to her voice as she said temporizingly, “Dosia, please +don’t keep Reginald out so late again as you did this +afternoon. It is too cold.” +</p> +<p> +“We only went to the post-office; he said he was +warm.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia, who had generously curtailed her practicing to +take the mother’s place, felt ill-used. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111'></a>111</span> +</p> +<p> +“I know; but it was too late for him. His feet were as +cold as ice. I am <em>so</em> afraid of croup.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m sorry,” said Dosia, in a low voice. “I won’t do it +again.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, never mind that now.” Lois hesitated, and then +took the plunge: “I want to speak to you about Lawson +Barr, Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s color, which came and went so prettily when +she spoke, always left her when she was really moved, or +at the times when girls ordinarily blush. She turned pale +now and her eyes became defiant, but she did not answer. +</p> +<p> +The other stumbled along, sorry and ashamed, as if she +were the culprit: +</p> +<p> +“People have been commenting—I hear that he has +been with you a great deal lately.” +</p> +<p> +“Where?” The girl’s voice was hard. +</p> +<p> +“On the train.” +</p> +<p> +“He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice +the week before—yes, and yesterday. And he came out +with me once.” She counted out the times as if they were a +contravention. “I don’t see how I am going to help it if +people speak to me, I can’t <em>tell</em> them to go away. <em>I</em> don’t +want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one +day; was that commented on, too?” +</p> +<p> +There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth +by outraged modesty—and there is no modesty that feels +itself more outraged than that of the girl who knows she +has given some slight cause for reproof. +</p> +<p> +“Dosia, be reasonable,” said Lois, annoyed that her talk +was being made so hard for her. “I know it’s horrid to +be ‘spoken to,’ but Justin is very particular, and he feels +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112'></a>112</span> +that we are responsible for you. And, besides, you wouldn’t +want it thought that you liked Lawson’s society. I am to +go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the +hour for your lesson changed.” She paused for some +answer, but none came, and she went on: “I told Justin +that he need not worry, there was no danger of your caring +too much for <em>Lawson</em>! That’s nonsense. Why, you +know all <em>about</em> him, and just what he amounts to. But, of +course, if you are seen with him——” +</p> +<p> +“You need not say any more. I never want to speak to +him again!” said Dosia, strangling. She swept her things +from the table and rushed up to her own room in a +whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the imputation +in Lois’ tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was +pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what +another despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate +of him as she had hitherto been to the public one. +</p> +<p> +She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something +that she had been unconsciously dreading had come +upon her—the notice of her little world. Before it had been +voiced to her by Lois she had persistently considered herself +unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion +for her being “spoken to,” yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment +that she had not been quite true to her +highest instincts. +</p> +<p> +The exquisitely sensitive perception which is an inherent +part of innocence was hers. The Dosia who at twelve could +not be induced to enter a room when a certain man was in +it, because she “did not like the way he <em>looked</em> at her,” +had as unerring an instinct now as then; it was an instinct +so deep, so interwoven with every pulse of her nature, that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113'></a>113</span> +to deny it ever so little was a spiritual hurt. She could not +have told why certain subjects, certain joking expressions +even, revolted her so that she shrank from them involuntarily. +She could not have told why she knew there was +something about Lawson different from the other men she +had been accustomed to. Dosia not only knew nothing of +the practice of evil, she knew nothing of life nor the laws +of it; but it could never be said of her that she did not +know when right bordered on wrong. She knew—and it +would have been impossible for her not to have known—her +slightest deviation from that shining road which can +only be followed by white feet. Her first quick idea of +Lawson as not the kind of man that she would ever want +to marry still held good. Back of all this was the image +of the true prince. +</p> +<p> +There are people whose natures we always feel electrically, +a sensation which depends neither on liking nor on +disliking, and which often partakes of both. When we meet +them there is always a slight shock, a psychic tingling, a +displacement of values, that makes us uncertain of our +pathway; the colors seen in this artificial light are different +from those seen by day. Barr affected Dosia thus. If he +came into a room, she knew it at once; dancing or walking +or talking with others, she felt his eyes upon her, disquieting +her and making her conscious of his presence, +so that she could not get up or sit down naturally. When +he was not there, everything was flat and uninteresting +in the withdrawal of this exciting disquietude. If she met +his remarks cleverly, it gave her a delighted occupation +for hours in recalling them; if she failed in repartee, and +was “thick” and school-girlish, her cheeks would burn +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114'></a>114</span> +and the taste for life would leave her; she could hardly +wait to see him again to retrieve herself. She was not in +love with Barr, she was not even in love with love,—a +fairly healthful process,—but she was in love with the excitement +of his presence. +</p> +<p> +She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to +seek her. After the night of the bazaar and that wondrous +waltz, she had felt that he must fly to speak to her at the +nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had played for +her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure +him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She +invented many excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp +disappointment of which he was necessarily unconscious. +As she met him casually at different places,—with the old +quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar manner,—his +lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over +which she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she +lived in was entirely of her own creation. In these last two +months she had always an undercurrent of thought for +him, whether she was practicing or sewing, or chaffing +with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy +attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawson’s avoidance of her +had come a childish, uncalculating’ impulse to attract. +Dosia had not told the truth when she said that she could +not help his speaking to her; she knew very well the +morning he would have passed her by in the train, as +usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,—he +knew the place allotted to him,—but he accepted permission. +When he sat down by her, she swiftly wished him +away again; yet her heart beat under his cool glance—a +glance which seemed to read her every thought. These +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115'></a>115</span> +interviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, +yet in which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious +and stinging pleasure, like eating ice. +</p> +<p> +There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about +Christmas-time and after—a delightful flare that burned +up red and glowing, only to sink back gradually into the +darkness of monotony. There was that fall into a hum-drum +condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which +shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept +later down-town, and the women had the usual influx of +winter colds and minor maladies which interfere with +planned festivities. The younger sort had engagements, individually +and collectively, for “things in town,” either +coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight +with friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove +Tuesday had fallen through. +</p> +<p> +The fairy glamour was already gone for Dosia. The +personal note which she had missed at first was everything, +and she found it nowhere but in Lawson. If she +could have poured out her thoughts and feelings to Lois,—“talked +things over,” girl-fashion,—if Lois had been +her friend and lover—But Lois had no room for her; +Dosia had learned to feel all the bitterness of the alien. +And she was shy with the pleasant but self-sufficient women +whom she met socially, and who were so intimate with one +another; Dosia merely sat on the edge of conversations, +so to speak, and smiled. She could not learn this assured +fluency. The very children were hedged in from her by +restrictions. To give up those little incidental meetings +with Lawson was to give up the one silver string on which +hung happiness, and yet—and yet—Dosia felt the sting +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116'></a>116</span> +of Lois’ matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him +indescribably. All women look down upon a man who will +allow himself to be despised. She had cherished an ideal of +him as a man lonely, misunderstood, terribly handicapped +by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable of +good and noble things. She had thought—— +</p> +<p> +“Dosia?” +</p> +<p> +“Well?” +</p> +<p> +“Will you shut your door? The light streams down +here and keeps Reginald from going to sleep. He waked +when you went up-stairs.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia rose and closed the door noiselessly; she would +have liked to shut it with a bang. It was a climax. There +seemed to be nothing that she could do in this house that +was right! Her attitude had ceased to be only that of an +alien, it was that of an antagonist; but it was also that of +a lonely and unguarded child. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117'></a>117</span>CHAPTER NINE</h2> +<p> +The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. +Dosia could hear Justin’s voice upraised +toward his only son, and Lois’ pleading “<em>Please</em>, +Justin!” +</p> +<p> +“Be quiet, Lois; I’ll settle this. Go down-stairs.” +</p> +<p> +“I want dinky orter.” The child’s voice was high. +</p> +<p> +“You have just had a drink of water; lie still.” +</p> +<p> +“Redge ’ants ’noder dinky orter.” +</p> +<p> +“Do you hear me? Lie still.” +</p> +<p> +“Let me take him, Justin; I’m sure he isn’t well. I——” +</p> +<p> +Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, +and could imagine the look from Justin that had commanded +her obedience. There was a definite masculine authority +about him before which, on those rare occasions when he +chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed +down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric +ages. Only the son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness +caught from the same blood. +</p> +<p> +It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother +down-stairs, vibrating with sympathy for her child, could +not understand Justin’s attitude, or why he was so much +more severe with the boy than he had ever been with Zaidee. +</p> +<p> +Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate +princess, toward whom his attitude must be always that of +tenderness and chivalry. But the boy was different. Civilized +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118'></a>118</span> +man still usually lives in the outward semblance of a harem, +in a household with a large predominance of women. Justin +had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature in the +house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! +And he knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense +or fooling about it. His “Lie still, you rascal, or I’ll make +you,” voiced in its sternness an even deeper sentiment than +he had for Zaidee. +</p> +<p> +Something of this hardness was still in his manner when +he came down once more, after reducing the child to quiet, +and leaned over his wife to kiss her good-by. +</p> +<p> +“Are you going out again?” Her voice had a dull +patience in it and her eyes refused to meet his. +</p> +<p> +“Yes; did you want me for anything special?” +</p> +<p> +He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair +skin and blue eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation +of his wife, set off by his luxuriously lined overcoat. +It was a new one; he had lately, at Lois’ insistence, gone to +a more expensive tailor, and the richness of the cloth and +its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. Nothing +so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. +Justin’s discarded one had passed through every +stage of decent finesse—the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed +closing, the relined sleeves, the buttons sewed on +daily at the breakfast-table by his wife in the places from +which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship still dangled. +This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude +to make a new and opulent person of him. +</p> +<p> +“No, of course I don’t want you for anything special”—she +spoke in a monotone. “I only thought you were +going to stay home.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119'></a>119</span> +</p> +<p> +“I’ve got to go to Leverich’s, and I want to speak to +Selden about the house first. I promised him I’d stop there.” +</p> +<p> +They had decided to take one of the houses that were +building on the hill, and Selden was the architect. +</p> +<p> +“You have been out every night this week”—there was +a suspicion of tears in her voice. “I do so hate to be left +alone.” +</p> +<p> +“You have Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +“Dosia! How would <em>you</em> like to be left with Dosia? I +can’t make out that girl. She gets more wooden every day, +and if I speak to her she looks as if she thought I was going +to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home this evening—won’t +you, dear?” +</p> +<p> +“I can’t—I wish I could.” He said the words mechanically, +for he was burning to get away to Leverich to talk +over some matters. “I must be at Selden’s by half-past eight.’ +</p> +<p> +“It is only a quarter-past now—you can walk there in +five minutes. Do sit down for a moment. I don’t get any +chance to talk to you at all, and you come home so late to +dinner that you never see the children any more—except +to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night.” +</p> +<p> +Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a +scarlet gown and held a piece of white embroidery in her +lap. She seemed to absorb all the light in the room, and +to leave the rest of it dark by contrast—her rosed cheeks, +her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves +of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She +was beautiful, but Justin did not care to look at her; it +was even momentarily repugnant to him to do so. He +sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his hat against it. She +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120'></a>120</span> +lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to him; +absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt +a loss—— +</p> +<p> +Her remark about the children made him wince. He was +a man who loved his children, and he had not only been +obliged to lose most of the sweetness of their possession +lately,—the sweetness that consists in watching the unfolding, +day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,—but +when he had the rare chance of being in their society he +could not enjoy it; a hitherto unsuspected capriciousness +and irritation laid the precious moments waste. He could +hear Zaidee’s gentle little voice repeating her mother’s perfunctory +extenuation: “Poor daddy’s nervous; come away, +Redge!” +</p> +<p> +“I hope you’ll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet +under the stairs,” said Lois suddenly. +</p> +<p> +“He’ll put one there if he can.” +</p> +<p> +“If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. +I don’t want the house if he can’t put the closet in. I——” +</p> +<p> +“All right. I’ve got to go now.” If he had cared to think +about it, he might have wondered why she wanted him to +wait for such last words as these. As the door closed behind +him, she let her embroidery fall from her fingers and listened +to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far into +the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it +carried him from her. +</p> +<p> +The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger +of prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures—of +which the house on the hill was one. The typometer +was having a boom, the orders for it were phenomenal; +the factory was working night and day. Even with the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121'></a>121</span> +principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, +it was hard not to count on an unvaried continuance of the +miraculous; everybody knows of instances when it has continued, +or seemed to. In reality, there is no such continuous +miracle; a succession of adapted conditions has to be keenly +worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a sense, +the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently +assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the +main one. +</p> +<p> +The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession +of the factory that bright November morning was +as different in graduation from that present with him now +as the single simply clear notes of the flute are from the +twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole orchestra. +Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing +that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily +complications of enlarging the business was the nagging +daily complication of keeping enough of a balance in the +bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money came in lavishly +at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as the +essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a +hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of +credit, but “hands” must be paid off on Saturday night; +there had been one Saturday when there had been what +Leverich called “tall hustling” by him and Martin and +Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had +thought of his backers as men of millions—with that easy, +assured confidence one has in regard to the superficially +known; the millions were in the concrete, solid and +golden—a bottomless store in reserve. He had gradually come to +realize that the millions were a fluctuant quality, running +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122'></a>122</span> +like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, there +in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. +Both Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of +making a little butter cover many slices of bread; to have +to appropriate money to cover an emergency was a daily +expedient—the ability to do so ranked as a part of one’s +assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large +sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; +the “business” seemed to swallow up everything, and +more than all else her husband. To his luminous, excited +brain, the different phases of trade passed and repassed as +pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated +attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait +until after the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly +tiresome and unkind of Lois to wish to engross him, when +he was laboring for her welfare and the children’s. +</p> +<p> +Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants +to keep in order, children to be attended to, who was +subject to the claims of social functions, clubs, friends, +and affairs generally, was through everything absorbed in +her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but a woman. +His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata +of her thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him +leave with a shade less of affection for her in the morning +farewell left her with a sick feeling throughout the day; +everything done in those next hours was merely to fill up +the time until his return, that she might see then if her +exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached +him tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with +a sick feeling that she spent the day, but with an absolutely +intolerant pain, because she must wait until night to set +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123'></a>123</span> +herself right with him again. At those times she could not +derive any satisfaction even from her children—her only +refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to +go to town and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed +tears in the crowded streets, or before a clerk who is showing +one goods over a counter. But when she went shopping +too many days in succession the children showed the effects +of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother’s absence. +</p> +<p> +She could not understand why the morning reproach and +the evening retraction had grown alike unimportant to her +husband; after the first surprise and solicitude occasioned +by this recurrent state, he had grown to regard it as something +to be borne with like any other normal annoyance,—like +fog, rain, or mosquitoes,—that measurably lessened the +joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any +bearing. A man must have patience with his wife’s complainings, +and try always to remember the delicacy of her +bodily strength and the many calls upon it, which made +little things a grievance to her. He himself never complained; +complaint was in itself distasteful to him. +</p> +<p> +Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing +into the dark mood she dreaded, when there came +the welcome sound of the door-bell. A moment later the +maid took up a card to Dosia on which was inscribed the +name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired +in an old “dress suit,” the conventional lines of which, with +the stiff expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow +angularity of feature still more pronounced. He looked +so oddly out of place in the little drawing-room, where he +sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back as far as +possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124'></a>124</span> +stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his +side, and yet he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, +that Dosia felt a swift pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, +he disentangled himself from the sofa and stood up +to take the two hands which she had extended to him before +she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring +earnestness. +</p> +<p> +“Well, you are all right,” he said, after the first greetings; +“Miss Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was +back in the South I’d say just what I thought of you, but +I’m afraid to up here; folks are too careful about complimentin’ +for me. When I see a young lady like you,—or like +Mrs. Alexander, here,—” he rose and bowed gallantly, +“I want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome +you look. There’s nothing so beautiful on God’s earth to +me as a beautiful woman—unless it’s a mother. A mother +doesn’t need to have a complexion if she’s got the mother +spirit shinin’ out of her. I had a mother once—a better +never lived. She’s dead.” +</p> +<p> +“That is very sad,” said Lois, in the pause that followed +this announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible +smile. Both she and Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal +conversation after painful communing. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, ma’am,” said the visitor, sitting, as before, with +his long legs back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing +the top of it. +</p> +<p> +“How is your wife?” asked Dosia. “Have you seen her +lately?” +</p> +<p> +“I was home for a week around Christmas-time,” answered +Mr. Cater. “It’s sort of unsettling, though, to go home for +a short period—at least, I find it so. I don’t know <em>as</em> it pays, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125'></a>125</span> +except as something to look forward to before you’ve done +it; there’s a good deal in that. My wife lives with her family; +they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it seems +like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home.” +</p> +<p> +“I should think she would want to stay here with you,” +said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. “Well, the +fact is,” he conceded, “my wife’s powerful fond of her +family. There’s nothing against a woman being fond of her +family.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no,” said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“No, ma’am. My wife’s a mighty fine woman. If I’d had +the luck to belong to her family—but seems like I was +made different; the Yankee side to me crops up, I expect, +when I ain’t countin’ on it. She did bring the children and +try livin’ up here in a flat the first year I went into the +business, but it made her so pinin’ she had to go back; she +wasn’t used to the neighborhood. Women depend a good +deal on the neighborhood. <em>You</em> know my wife, Miss Dosia. +Her parents are gettin’ sort of old and agin’, and she +allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin’ her, +I reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas +day for drawin’ a gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of +broke her all up; he’d promised her to quit. Her sister’s +husband, Jim Pierce, he’d lit out before. Now, there’s the +other brother, Satterson—he’s a mighty fine fellow, six +foot two in his stockin’s, but he doesn’t <em>do</em> anything. Just +drinks. My wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. +I don’t blame any woman for being devoted to her family—shows +heart.” +</p> +<p> +“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Dosia, staring at Mr. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126'></a>126</span> +Cater, who wore an inscrutable expression. She was wondering +if this crew of unsavory relations-in-law lived on +Mr. Cater’s earnings; she knew his wife as a pretty, fretful +woman with a discontented mouth. +</p> +<p> +“After all, there isn’t much in a man, when you get down +to it, to interest a woman,” continued Mr. Cater impartially. +“She wants him to think of <em>her</em>; of co’se it’s his business +to. I had a sort of set idea to begin on—but there’s nothin’ +in life so wreckin’ as a set idea; I’ve found that out. You’ve +got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and turn it so’s +you can see to keep on your windin’ way without runnin’ +down your fellow-bein’s—isn’t that so? I don’t blame any +woman for findin’ out that a man doesn’t always make up +for home and mother—I don’t know that I always yearn +for my own society.” His inscrutable expression changed to +a smile. “I reckon you won’t yearn for it, either, if I go +on talkin’ in this way.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, I will,” said Dosia, dimpling. “Did you see +my father and mother when you were in Balderville? How +did they look?” +</p> +<p> +“Why—about the same as usual,” replied Mr. Cater +delicately, with a swift mental view of them passing before +his eyes that instantly materialized itself to Dosia. “I +promised them I’d come and see you—and meant to before +this. It was through Miss Dosia’s comin’ here that I got +acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander,” he continued, +turning to Lois. “He’s a mighty fine man. He and +I, we’re choppin’ at the same log, so to speak, only he’s +takin’ side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon he’s got a +pretty good backin’?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes,” affirmed Lois. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127'></a>127</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, ma’am. Of course, he doesn’t talk about it. I +haven’t seen Mr. Alexander much for a couple of weeks; +he’s been busy and I’ve been busy—we lunch at the same +place sometimes. I know some of his friends—Mr. Leverich +for one—slightly in the way of business. Mr. Martin—Mr. +Martin’s a man <em>nobody</em> knows more’n slightly. You would +not think he was such a smart business man, would you? +He’s so sort of small and feeble-looking, and has such a +little lisping voice. But <em>I</em> don’t care for any dealings with +him; those little clawlike hands of his rake in all they +touch. Now you think I’m hard on him, don’t you?” He +hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness +at Lois: “Martin sort of reminds me of somethin’ that +happened with my two boys when I was home at Christmas. +They’re little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, right cute, too, if +they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you.” +</p> +<p> +“They are dear little fellows,” said Dosia warmly. +</p> +<p> +“They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind ’em, +and Angy—that’s the eldest, he’s six—was stoppin’ the +way; so I says to him, ‘What’s stoppin’ you, son?’ and +he answers: ‘Oh, I’m carryin’ up Jim’s cake and my cake, +and I’m eatin’ <em>Jim’s cake now</em>.’ That’s like Martin for all +the world—always carryin’ somebody’s cake for ’em, and +swallowin’ it on the way. Well, doesn’t it seem good to be +lookin’ at you again, Miss Dosia! But I’m sorry Alexander +isn’t in, too.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I hope he’ll come before you leave,” returned Lois. +It seemed a foregone conclusion that he must, when it was +discovered that the nine-forty-five train back to town was +then on the point of departure, half a mile away, and the +next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128'></a>128</span> +a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive +recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed +time over which conversation must be spread has an indescribably +paralyzing effect on spontaneity. Like many +talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, when you +counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming +silent. +</p> +<p> +Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, +while Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely +about the denizens of Balderville, to the third and fourth +generation. The very word “home” carried such suggested +association that Dosia half forgot that it had never been +one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy. +</p> +<p> +When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the +chafing-dish and Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little +chair drawn up with the others by the small mahogany +table, and relaxed once more. +</p> +<p> +“Well, this is comfort,” he said, with a sort of wistful +gratitude. “I’ve been thinkin’ ’twas pretty inconsiderate +of me to miss that train, but I’m sort of glad now that I +did. When I see you two beautiful young ladies takin’ all +this trouble for me—well, I just can’t tell you how I appreciate +it; sort of warms me up inside.” +</p> +<p> +“You must get pretty lonely sometimes,” said Lois +kindly, with a sudden sympathy for something in his tone. +</p> +<p> +He nodded slowly. “Well, yes, I do; but I’ve quit +thinkin’ of it, as a rule. I reckon I’ve got about as much +as I deserve in this world, when you come to sizin’ things +up. If you get to pityin’ yourself, you slump; you slump +all <em>to</em> pieces—ain’t no mortal good to yourself nor anybody +else. I’ve found <em>that</em> out.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129'></a>129</span> +</p> +<p> +“You seem to find out a good many things,” said Lois, +with a twinge of assent. +</p> +<p> +“Well, yes, I do.” His face relaxed in a pleased smile. +“Keep addin’ to my collection daily; but it isn’t cheap, +no more than other collectin’—costs money. Girard says—by +the way, I never asked you if you knew Girard, Bailey +Girard; I met him to-night getting off the train. I didn’t +know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this rabbit’s +more’n good. I haven’t had one like it since I was with +Girard last year.” +</p> +<p> +“No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois +a little wearily. +</p> +<p> +“Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought +to. He’s a <em>man</em>. Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s +related to the Wilmots, Judge Wilmot’s family; they lived +down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. His folks were +mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their +money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired +of it myself. I know a lot of splendid families who have +lost all their money—or are a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me +up now when I hear of anybody that’s risin’ into the ranks +of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible to walk on +somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.” +</p> +<p> +“How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody +ever was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go +through what he has, though it’s made him what he is. His +mother was left a widow after they’d moved ’way out West. +She was a delicate woman, and had a hard time of it struggling +along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t know +that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what her +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130'></a>130</span> +mind got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died +at a little town in Indiana, on her way back East, and there +wasn’t anyone to look after the child. He was bound out to a +man on a farm; he was ten years old then, and he stayed +there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat +him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a +time the poor little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ +mother, used to crawl into the barn and hide in a corner of +the hay near the dumb beasts and cry his heart out till +he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever +talks about himself, but this was a time when we were +stalled in a snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it +was because of the Christmas story you read in the Bible +that he felt that if he could only get into the barn +in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to +<em>her</em>.” +</p> +<p> +“How did he get away?” asked Dosia. She longed pitifully +to take the boy’s little hand and kiss it, and hold it +against her cheek, although the hurt had been over so +long ago. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn’t +tell me the whole of it. He sold papers in New York, and +went to night-school; and next he went to college and +rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own people, +too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba—I guess +some of the wounded know what he did for them. Later he +went to South America on some government business; he’s +a personal friend of the President. He’s young, too, not +more’n twenty-eight. He’s bound to get ahead at whatever +he sets himself to. But he’s got an awful tender heart; +I saw him nearly kill a big Swede once that was wallopin’ +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131'></a>131</span> +a sick horse. What you laughin’ at, Miss Dosia? I reckon +we’re all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn’t <em>that</em> time, +is it?” He turned with startled amaze to look behind him +at the clock that was striking. +</p> +<p> +“I’m afraid it is,” affirmed Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Then I’ve got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. +’Tisn’t manners to eat and run, I know, but—” +He had risen and was swiftly putting on his coat in the +hall. “Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can get into this +best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin’. +Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of +your hospitality; I do <em>so</em>. I—” He was loping down the +path already, his long legs making preternatural shadows +on the snow in the moonlight. Dosia called after him mischievously, +“You’d better wait until the twelve-three,” before +she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air +was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere +of the lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. +Cater’s presence had been. +</p> +<p> +She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing +away the remains of the little supper, her offer of assistance +having been refused. Lois wished to be there alone +when her husband came in, experience having taught her +that he was much more apt to be communicative at that +time than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, +and feeling still the interest of it, he would like to talk of +it; by morning it would have relapsed so deeply into his +inner consciousness that it would take a sort of conversational +derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any reminiscence +whatever. +</p> +<p> +He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132'></a>132</span> +surprised to find traces of a convivial evening, when he had +expected to be late. +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Cater has been here,” announced Lois, in explanation. +</p> +<p> +“Cater! I’m sorry to have missed him.” +</p> +<p> +“He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not +go until eleven, and I was sure you would be in before +that.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, I meant to be.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,”—something +prompted her against her will to say what had +been rankling in her memory,—“he thinks Mr. Martin is +like a crab, and that he takes people in between his claws +and pinches them. I wish you’d be careful.” +</p> +<p> +Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. “He will +not pinch me, at all events,” he said shortly. After a +moment’s pause he made an effort to return to his former +manner, but with an altered tone: +</p> +<p> +“I’m sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting +with Selden about the house; you can have the closet. +After that we were all talking at Leverich’s. He had a +friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow, extraordinarily +interesting; he was giving us points on the South +American trade. He’s going to be of great use to us, he +goes down there again in the spring. He’s a fine-looking +fellow, by the way, tall and well set up; he reminds me of +Brent, Lois—you remember him? The same kind of bright, +resolute face; only this man’s browner.” +</p> +<p> +Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, +Justin turned to Dosia, who had slipped back into the +room to look under the table and chairs for a blue bow +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133'></a>133</span> +that had fallen from her hair. She stood now in the doorway +with it in her hand. +</p> +<p> +“He came up from the South the same day you did last +fall, Dosia, he was in that wreck. It must have been a horrible +thing.” Justin broke off at the retrospection of the +narrative. +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the +door for support. +</p> +<p> +“You were fortunate to get off so well.” Absorbed in +his own recital, Justin did not observe her. “He was +going from one car to another when the train went off the +trestle—I don’t wonder you would never talk about it, +Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There +was a poor young girl who was alone, like you—he didn’t +know what became of her; he was ill himself in the hospital +for two weeks afterwards. His description of the whole +thing was extraordinarily vivid.” Justin was now bolting +windows and putting out lights as he talked. “You two +girls must go to bed at once; it’s nearly twelve.” +</p> +<p> +“What was his name?” asked Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“His name? Why, I thought I’d told you. His name’s +Girard—Bailey Girard.” +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134'></a>134</span>CHAPTER TEN</h2> +<p> +“Reginald has the measles.” +</p> +<p> +Lois made the announcement breathlessly, as +she stood outside of the drawing-room, addressing +the visitors who sat on the sofa, talking to +Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“The doctor has just gone, and he says it is the measles. +I don’t suppose I had better come in the room.” There +was a tone of resentment in her voice which seemed to +originate in the idea of being excluded; in reality, it was +caused by the bitter thought that she had known for a +couple of days that Redge was not well, and that his +father had been exacting with him. “I really suppose I had +better not come in.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, don’t mind me!” Mrs. Leverich, gorgeous in velvet +and furs, spoke reassuringly. “There are no children +at our house, and I’ve had the measles.” +</p> +<p> +“Of course, it’s not scarlet fever,” continued Lois, +dropping into a chair, “or diphtheria. I suppose Zaidee +will get it, and we have to be quarantined. I don’t know +what to do about you, Dosia.” She was feeling the fell +blow of a contagious disease, which upsets every previously +stable condition. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve had the measles,” said the girl, but she added +with quick anxiety: “There are my lessons; do you suppose +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135'></a>135</span> +it will make any difference about them? I don’t see +how I can lose them now, and there’s that concert Saturday.” +</p> +<p> +“If we’re quarantined, you’re quarantined,” said Lois +tersely. “If there was <em>any</em> place where you could go and +stay——” +</p> +<p> +“Mrs. Alexander, let her come to me,” said Mrs. Leverich +warmly. “I’d love to have her; I <em>really</em> would. She +can keep up with her lessons and engagements just the +same then. You know, I’m always so happy when I can +have a young girl in the house; and as for Mr. Leverich, +nothing pleases him better. Go and pack your trunk at +once, my dear, and we’ll take it on the carriage as we go +back.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia looked hesitatingly at Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Why—I do not know,” said Lois, surprised, yet considering. +</p> +<p> +“But <em>I</em> do.” Mrs. Leverich spoke with a cordial authority +that, after a little more conversation, settled the +matter. +</p> +<p> +Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise +little help of Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from +the closet and toilet articles from the dressing-table, and +in her efforts dropped the red ribbon from her hair into +the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, swift huggings +from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this +transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was +something on her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor +below, she ran down to speak to her, half dressed: “Lois, +I hate to leave you here alone; I don’t mind being kept +from things, really and truly. Let me stay and help you +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136'></a>136</span> +with dear little Redge.” For once her sympathy made her +natural. +</p> +<p> +“No, you had better go,” said Lois. She had but one +desire—to be left at liberty at last with her own. She +added, to avoid further pleading: +</p> +<p> +“I would rather be alone.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” exclaimed Dosia, shrinking. But conscience +had unexpectedly claimed her, and she went on, hesitantly, +with a painful timidity, her color coming and +going: +</p> +<p> +“I wanted to ask—do you think I ought to go to Mrs. +Leverich’s, after what you said? Won’t Mr. Barr be +there?” +</p> +<p> +In the whole realm of the mother’s mind there was no +room for anything at present but her measles-smitten +household. She looked at Dosia as if making an effort to +understand. “Why, yes, I suppose he will be there. Just +don’t have anything to do with him if you don’t want to. +You will not need to; he is out of the house most of the +time, anyway.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, very well,” assented Dosia, chilled and yet relieved. +The blood of youth was already running riot at +the delightful prospect of another change. But she slipped +into the nursery to kiss poor little feverish Redge good-by, +and leaned out of the carriage that was driving her +away to wave her hand again and again to Zaidee, whose +red cheeks and little snub-nose were pressed close to the +window-pane. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Leverich was a woman who was somewhat below +par in birth and education, devoid of certain finer instincts, +and used to an overflow of luxury in her daily living +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137'></a>137</span> +that amounted sometimes to vulgar display. To +balance this, she was still handsome, if somewhat too stout, +and hospitable to a superlative degree. “Staying company” +was a necessity to her happiness. She had an +absolute passion for making other people comfortable, and +surrounded her guests with a kindness and forethought so +enveloping that it almost spoiled them for contact afterwards +with a rude world. She really possessed in this regard +an unselfish good-heartedness, mingled with a sort +of vanity that was pleased with applause at its manipulations; +her own comfort was indifferent to her beside the +subtler and warmer pleasure of being the source of good +to others. It is no figure of speech to say that she was +willing to do anything to promote the welfare of her +guests; it was no hardship to give up her own way in +their interests, or to do any act, however tiring and distasteful, +that gave pleasure to anyone. She hated cards, +yet she would play long, tedious games with beaming incompetence, +to make up a hand; she disliked the smell of +tobacco, but was never satisfied until every man around +her was happily supplied with cigars or pipes. Music was +a jangle to her, and any book above the caliber of the +fiction which displays a low-necked authoress upon the +cover a weariness indeed; but she would labor unceasingly +to place both music and literature within the reach of her +guests. She had windows opened when she herself was +chilly, and fires lighted when she was suffering with the +heat; she took long drives in the hot sun when she would +have much preferred a nap; she chaperoned girls uncomplainingly +until five o’clock in the morning. The least wish +of a guest, spoken or divined, was gratified if within her +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138'></a>138</span> +power. It is true that she had a retinue of servants at her +command, but, if necessary, she would have served her +guests with her own hands, and had been known to do so. +There was only one drawback to her hospitality—she +welcomed, but did not speed the parting guest. It was +difficult indeed to leave without a pitched battle, and the +effort of temporary disunion was so great as sometimes +to result in a permanent rupture of friendship. Her “I +see—you don’t want to stay with us any longer” voiced +that injured feeling which blasts whatever it comes in contact +with, and which disclaimers serve only to heighten. +Once away from her, her interest in the former guest +ceased almost entirely, no matter how close the association +had been under her roof; outside of it everyone was lost +in a haze which called for a distinct and wearying effort, +seldom undertaken, to penetrate. +</p> +<p> +In appearance she was on the Oriental type of her half-brother, +Lawson Barr, but with a softness, both of expression +and contour, which he did not possess. She was +ten years older than he. Her motions and the tone of her +voice were languid. Her husband—who enjoyed the benefits +of being the chief and permanent guest in this household—was +extremely fond of her, and proud of her beauty +and popularity. Leverich was one of those coarse-seeming +and coarse-acting men who, nevertheless, come of a race of +gentlefolk, and who have innately, and no matter how +much they may choose to overlay the fact, certain traditions. +He had been known to say, in rebuttal of some +criticism on his wife’s breeding, what was quite true—that +she was good enough for <em>him</em>; but he had, underneath, +a little contempt for her because she was. It was one of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139'></a>139</span> +the traditions that a man should find a quality in his wife +to revere. +</p> +<p> +Leverich liked to surround his wife with luxuries, to +give her everything that money could buy and that her +gently sensuous temperament craved. Her attachment was +riveted to him by gifts of clothing and jewelry and bric-à-brac +as well as money—such things being to her the +only tangible evidences of affection. Dosia had hitherto +seen the house only as a caller. She was impressed now by +the richness of the furnishings above, as she was led up to +her room, a large, many-windowed apartment on the +second floor. It was all a gleam of polished mahogany, and +brass and mirrors and silver toilet articles, blended with +rose-silk draperies; the alcoved bed was spread with a +flowered silk counterpane, the floors covered with rich +Eastern rugs; easy-chairs and low tables spread with +books dotted the room; a couch piled high with down +cushions stood at a seductive angle. A maid glided forward +to take Dosia’s hat and cloak, while another knelt at the +hearth to light the logs upon the brass andirons, and Mrs. +Leverich came in and out in an overflow of solicitude. +</p> +<p> +“I really think you had better rest. You <em>must</em> be tired. +No, of course”—at Dosia’s laughing remonstrance—“the +drive was nothing, but the shock—a shock like that tells +on you before you know it. Here comes your trunk; have +you the key? Elizabeth, unpack Miss Dosia’s trunk, and +get out a dressing-gown for her. I’m going to insist on +your lying down on the lounge for a while. Now, don’t do +that, Elizabeth will take off your shoes for you. And, +Amelia,”—this to the maid at the hearth,—“bring up +some tea and biscuits. No, you don’t care for tea? Well, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140'></a>140</span> +a glass of sherry, then, and some hothouse grapes. My +dear Dosia,—you’ll let me call you Dosia, won’t you?—you +may not feel the need of it now, but it will do you +good. I’m not going to stay with you, I’ll just move this +little table with the magazines on it near you, and leave +you to rest; but first I want to show you this.” She opened +the door of a smaller, hexagonal apartment adjoining. +“I’m going to turn it into a music-room for you.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Mrs. Leverich!” protested Dosia, in amazement. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve been thinking of it all the way home in the carriage. +Of course, you won’t want to practice down-stairs, +where people are coming in and out all the time; it would +be very annoying to you. This has been used as an extra +dressing-room. I shall have those thick hangings taken +down and the furniture moved out, and put in light chairs +and a cottage piano, and a few palms over by the window. +You’ll see!” +</p> +<p> +“But, Mrs. Leverich——” +</p> +<p> +“Now, don’t say a <em>word</em>; it’s all settled. Elizabeth will +come to you when it’s time to dress, so you need give yourself +no anxiety about that. Just let me draw this coverlet +over you and tuck your feet in. Now, how sweet you do +look, to be sure!” +</p> +<p> +Dosia did “look sweet,” and as comfortable and soft as +a kitten. The light-blue kimono of outing flannel,—of +which she had been half ashamed when the maid unpacked +it,—though cheap, was becoming; her loosened hair fell +over the blended pillows and the rosy coverlet. The wood +fire at which she gazed crackled and sent out the pungent, +aromatic smell of Southern pine, which mingled with the +perfume of a bunch of violets on the table near the golden +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141'></a>141</span> +sherry in its crystal glass, and the plate of white and reddish +grapes. There was the unaccustomed stillness of a +large, well-appointed house, where the walls were deadened +to sound, and the floors had thick-piled rugs upon them, +and the servants walked with soft-shod feet. Such luxurious +well-being had never been Dosia’s before. This was +like being in a fairy palace, where you had only to clap +your hands to get anything you wished for. And the most +charming thing about the fairy palace was that there you +always met the prince. +</p> +<p> +This girl was so constituted that, except in the first +flush of excitement incident to her entrance into this new +sphere, she must have always some heart-warm thought, +some little inner pleasure of her own, to make the larger +one serve. Dosia knew now that she was to meet the true +prince. This was the house he visited; all this outer circle +of comfort was but the prelude to love—that mysterious +and intangible love that made you happy ever after. She +was glad that she had kept hold of that hand, and had not +let herself be drawn away by lesser ties. Her day-dream +was to bewitch and dazzle him, to compel him to her attraction; +a dozen situations, based on that first idea of his +recognition of her in some noble deed, occupied her happy +mind; in all moments of extra exaltation she brought out +the thought and played with it and hugged it to her. She +had yet to learn how few things happen as we imagine +them. +</p> +<p> +In the midst of her half-drowsy musings, the door behind +her burst open; suddenly a big collie-dog bounded +in. He was licking her cheeks, when a sharp whistle called +him back, and the door was instantly closed again. Dosia +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142'></a>142</span> +knew that the dog was Lawson’s. She sprang up and +locked the door, but her dream had vanished. She had a +tingling consciousness that she was to meet Lawson at +dinner. She made up her mind to be very dignified and cool +toward him; she rehearsed the manner in which her eyelashes +would fall, the politely bored expression of her +forced attention, the casual tips of her fingers as they +touched his in the conventional handshake of greeting—all +of which would emphasize the fact that he had now no +particular interest for her, if, indeed, he had ever had any. +</p> +<p> +But, after all, he was not at dinner, which was a relief, +and yet a disappointment: when you have sharpened your +weapons, it is only natural to want to use them. Lawson +did not appear the next day, nor the next. Once she heard +him coming in very late at night, and in the morning he +had gone before she breakfasted. A couple of times in the +late afternoon, when the dog came trotting ahead through +the hall, she had slipped aside, breathless, as from some +peril escaped. It was the third day after her arrival that +he suddenly made his appearance in the drawing-room, +where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of +music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought +the air too damp for Dosia. +</p> +<p> +She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she +had prefigured, and could have flagellated herself for the +color that she felt enveloping her from brow to throat +under his cool, appraising eyes, as he bent over the piano +as if to help her with her search. +</p> +<p> +“What do you wish to find?” he asked in a businesslike +way. “Perhaps I can assist you.” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you, it isn’t necessary.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143'></a>143</span> +</p> +<p> +She held her head at an unresponsive angle involuntarily, +so that she might not see his face, which had struck +her as unexpectedly younger and better-looking than +hitherto. +</p> +<p> +“I see that my sister has fitted up a little music-room +for you. Have you done much practicing there yet?” +</p> +<p> +“Some.” +</p> +<p> +“You are not homesick in your new quarters?” +</p> +<p> +“No.” +</p> +<p> +“Let me hold that portfolio for you.” He interposed a +dexterous hand. “Oh, don’t thank me—you see, if you +drop it, courtesy will oblige me to pick up all the music. +This is the first time we’ve met since you have been in the +house; I’ve been so patient that I deserve more than to +have little cold, hard monosyllables thrown at me.” +</p> +<p> +“Patient!” +</p> +<p> +“Haven’t I seen you slip out of the way when you +thought I was coming? I’m accustomed to the phenomenon.” +The lightness of his tone did not hide the bitter +strain under it. “Really, I’m not lacking in perception. +I wished to give you time to get inured to the sad fact +that I live here; and you need not have changed the time +for your lessons last week, for I have no regular time for +my daily exodus at present. If you <em>will</em> keep your head so +persistently turned away, you might as well utilize the +position. Play me something.” +</p> +<p> +“No, you play for me,” returned Dosia, glad of the +chance to divert his attention from her. +</p> +<p> +“I might play ‘Greeting,’ since I’m not going to get +any.” +</p> +<p> +He seated himself on the piano-bench she vacated, and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144'></a>144</span> +played a few strains absently; there was that in the low, +sweet chords among which his fingers strayed that could +not but enchain. She forgot her aloofness to listen. +Presently he said: +</p> +<p> +“Who is my rival?” +</p> +<p> +“What do you mean?” She started up, and stood with +both arms resting on the lower end of the grand piano, +staring at him. +</p> +<p> +“I could not think that blush was for me—that beautiful +color that stole over you when I came in. It couldn’t +be for me, when you have avoided me so pointedly. So I +concluded, of course, that it was either the reflection from +that brick wall out there, or was called forth by the +thought of my rival.” +</p> +<p> +“I will not say that it was the brick wall,” said Dosia, +yielding to the light, heady spirit he always roused in her, +with, also, the little under-knowledge of her secret dream. +</p> +<p> +“Then I will not say it was the rival,” said Lawson. He +added in a lower tone: “And I wouldn’t give it up to any +rival; I saw it—it was mine.” +</p> +<p> +“You claim a great deal,” returned Dosia, wishing that +she had the strength of mind to go and leave him, yet +loath to lose a moment of this converse. +</p> +<p> +He shook his head as he answered gently: “No, you +are mistaken there; I claim nothing. I have no rights—only +privileges. I hope it’s going to be my privilege to +have a little of your charming society in the next few days. +I shall be at home, perforce; I’ve lost my position.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Dosia, with her quick sympathy. +He raised one hand deprecatingly, while the other still +weaved in and out in a pianissimo accompaniment. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145'></a>145</span> +</p> +<p> +“Sorry? For me? Oh, that’s not the thing to say, +at all. You should condemn my inability to keep the +place.” +</p> +<p> +“Why do you talk like this?” asked Dosia, with a +pained feeling. +</p> +<p> +“Why do you run when you see me coming?” He +flashed a quizzical glance at her. +</p> +<p> +“I don’t,” she began to say, but her words trailed off +into an inarticulate murmur. +</p> +<p> +He had played a chord or two more to her silence before +he stopped to lean forward and say: +</p> +<p> +“Why did you avoid me on the train? You need not +trouble yourself to answer. Some kind person had warned +you against being too polite to me—and you took the +warning like a good little girl. It has been borne in upon +me quite a number of times that I do not exactly command +respect in this community. I assure you that I know +my place.” +</p> +<p> +“But, oh, why don’t you <em>make</em> people respect you?” +cried Dosia. “Why don’t you make them? If you really +try—oh, if I were a man, I wouldn’t sit quietly and say +such things. You can do anything if you really try.” +</p> +<p> +“Can you?” He smiled with indulgence at her copy-book +wisdom. “Well, perhaps you can, if there’s sufficient +impetus to the effort. There really isn’t with me. When I +was a boy—you’ll tire yourself if you stand up any longer. +Come and sit over here by the fire.” +</p> +<p> +She followed half mechanically to the sofa on which he +arranged the cushions for her, seating himself in the other +corner, where he leaned forward, looking, not at her, but +at the fire. His personality was so strong that each inch +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146'></a>146</span> +that lessened the distance between her and that lithe, +sinewy figure and the dark Oriental face brought a corresponding +thrill of magnetism to Dosia—a subtle excitement +which drew her into its spell. The confusion +which had clouded her at first was gone; she felt luminously +clear, in preparation for some great moment of +confidence, in which her mission would be to help and sustain. +She broke the silence presently to say, with a sweet +and halting diffidence, through which her earnestness +showed: +</p> +<p> +“I want you to tell me. You began to say—I want to +know about when you were a boy.” +</p> +<p> +“When I was a boy I made a wrong start. Heaven +knows, it wasn’t my fault! I was good enough before that—religiously +inclined!” He leaned forward and struck a +log with one of the fire-irons, sending a shower of sparks +flying upward. “Where do you think I learned half the +bad I know? At a camp-meeting! But I won’t go back to +the past—it’s a mistake. Only, I came here literally ‘on +suspicion.’” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia, with her clear spirit-voice; “and +you tried to work up from under it.” +</p> +<p> +Lawson dropped his chin into his hands, looking moodily +ahead. “I’m afraid not always. Sometimes the contrary.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, oh,” breathed Dosia, in a whisper. +</p> +<p> +“If you want me to tell you the truth—! Your relatives +are quite right in ordering you to avoid me. There has +never been anybody, you see, to really care whether I kept +straight or not.” +</p> +<p> +“Your sister?” +</p> +<div><a name='i146' id='i146'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i006' id='i006'></a> +<img src="images/i146.jpg" alt="He played a chord or two more to her silence" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>He played a chord or two more to her silence</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147'></a>147</span></div> +<p> +Lawson shrugged his shoulders. “It would, of course, +be pleasanter for Myra if she hadn’t me on her mind, and +Leverich has done his best, I suppose. I’m not groaning—just +telling you the bare facts. Living ‘on suspicion’ is +demoralizing in the long run, that’s all; one lives down to +an opinion as well as up to it, you know. There’s never +been anyone, since I was a child, to really believe in me, +so there’s nobody to be disappointed.” +</p> +<p> +“<em>I</em> will believe in you,” said Dosia, with the vibrating +tone of her emotion. Her clear eyes looked at his as if to +convey strength and warmth and all that was uplifting +straight to his heart. +</p> +<p> +“You had better not.” +</p> +<p> +“I will believe in you!” Her tone had even greater insistence. +“I know what it is—myself—to be with those +who do not care. You are not as other people think you! +You can be good and noble. You can”—her voice sank to +a whisper—“resist temptation. If one prays—it helps; I +know that.” Her voice rose steadily again, after a tremulous +silence: “You can never say again that no one +believes in you, for I believe in you.” +</p> +<p> +“And care?” asked Lawson. +</p> +<p> +His eyes glittered and his face worked with some unusual +emotion. +</p> +<p> +“And care,” assented Dosia, with the same unwavering +eyes and serious, childlike candor of tone. +</p> +<p> +He stooped and gently pressed his lips to her hand as it +lay upon her gown. “You are the very sweetest child! +I—” He stopped abruptly, and walked away to the +window. The next moment Mrs. Leverich was rustling into +the room. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148'></a>148</span> +</p> +<p> +If she suspected an interview too confidential, she +showed nothing of it in her manner. She had come back +to take her guest out driving, after all—the sun was shining. +Dosia ran to get ready, tingling—was it from the exaltation +or the excitement of this interview, with its unexpected +compact? She trembled with the pathos of it all. +She passed each phase of it rapidly before her mind, to +convince herself that there was nothing in words or feeling, +no, nor in that reverential homage of Lawson’s, that +could be interpreted as disloyalty to the unknown to +whom her future belonged. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Leverich was waiting with a magnificent wrap of +velvet and fur for Dosia to put on in the carriage over +her street costume. +</p> +<p> +“I was sure you were not warm enough yesterday,” she +explained. She leaned forward to call to the coachman: +“James, you may drive first to Benning’s. We are going +to get some chocolates to take with us, dear; I know girls +always enjoy themselves more if there is a box of chocolates +handy.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Mrs. Leverich!” said Dosia gratefully. +</p> +<p> +“And we will stop at the greenhouse and get some +flowers for you to wear to-night at dinner; you know, +George Sutton is coming. I want you to look particularly +well.” +</p> +<p> +“I don’t care to look particularly well for <em>him</em>,” objected +Dosia, stiffening. +</p> +<p> +“No, of course, you don’t <em>need</em> to; but, still, a girl +should always look as pretty as she <em>can</em>; she can never +tell who is going to see her. James, ask at the express-office +if there are any packages. I sent for some of the new +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149'></a>149</span> +books. Yes, that is for me. Now, my dear, you’ll have +something nice to read.” +</p> +<p> +“You are too good, Mrs. Leverich; you are just spoiling +me,” said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +In these three days she had been the recipient of so many +gifts and favors that it was difficult to know how to vary +her expression of gratitude. She had already been presented +with a white China silk tea-gown, the scores of two of the +latest light operas, and an amethyst belt-pin. The little +music-room had been fitted out appropriately from floor +to ceiling, and framed with palms; Mrs. Leverich had spent +the whole of one morning with a corps of servants, planning, +directing, and approving. Dosia had hardly time to +frame a wish before it was forestalled. +</p> +<p> +“It is such a comfort to me to have you here,” continued +Mrs. Leverich, sinking back among her cushions. “You +may take the Five-mile Drive, James. If I had only had a +daughter! I said this morning to Mr. Leverich, ‘I am +going to pretend she’s my daughter while she’s here.’ You +don’t mind, dear? You will let me have you for my very +own?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, indeed,” answered Dosia, with the warmth of +youth. +</p> +<p> +“I have never wished for a son. Boys are a terrible responsibility. +There is Lawson.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia, as she paused. +</p> +<p> +“He has always been such a trial. We have given him +every advantage—and he <em>has</em> every advantage naturally; +but it’s no use. Mr. Leverich says he will make one more +effort for him, and if that is no use he must go. We have +simply done all we can. I would not speak so openly to you +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150'></a>150</span> +if you had not been staying in the house, but you could +not help hearing.” +</p> +<p> +“Hearing——?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, these nights when he has come home so late. +George Sutton brought him home Tuesday night from the +train—he couldn’t walk alone. I was so ashamed at the +noise!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” breathed Dosia in a horrified undertone. She added, +“Has he always been like this?” +</p> +<p> +“More or less. At first it was only when he went away; +but he couldn’t keep any position long, because he <em>would</em> go +away for days and days at a stretch. And now it is getting +to be—<em>any</em> time. I’m sure we have done everything in this +world to keep it quiet. And Lawson has every advantage +naturally; it is only this—drinking. Of course, no one can +have any confidence in him; I always felt that it was hopeless, +from the first.” +</p> +<p> +No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation +as a ray of light gilding this dark and slimy +morass, the sight of which had unexpectedly revolted her. +In Balderville only the lower class of inhabitants drank; +no young man of respectability or position was to be seen +among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of +her through which she had promised to have faith? He +had not posed as devoid of offense; on the contrary, he had +confessed to guilt, only she had not quite understood. Sin +as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite decently presentable; +it is only when it is particularized that the monstrosities +below are hideously revealed. +</p> +<p> +“It must be a great grief to you,” she said now, with +earnestness. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151'></a>151</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much +on my mind after this winter; he has put his foot down. +The nights I have passed! I’m always fancying that he is +run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; it’s the most +dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream +on the way back—don’t forget; and those cakes at Mrs. +Springer’s—they were ordered yesterday. Where was I? +I forget. Oh, yes—the most dreadful strain! and I felt that +I ought to speak about him to you, as you are staying under +my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after the +disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep +up a pretense any longer. You can see just what he is +yourself.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, indeed,” said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent. +</p> +<p> +Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot +bouillon on her return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted +the logs in Dosia’s room with her own fat, white, +beringed hands, and enveloped the girl enthusiastically +several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in confirmation +of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty +about the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely +responsive in spirit to the least show of it, material +demonstrations were unnatural to her; she was shy of +being touched even by her own sex. It was only with little +children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in +caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster +had appealed so strongly to her imagination was partly because +of the fact that the comfort it conveyed transcended +the strangeness of contact. To be pressed now to a warm, +semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds of +mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarrassed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152'></a>152</span> +gratitude, which she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate +to the occasion. And she was weary of trying to elude the +vacillations of her mind. She would keep her promise to +Lawson,—yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the more +he needed it,—but she would be very careful, too; she +would be <em>very</em> careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to +spring into being. +</p> +<p> +He was at the dinner as well as Mr. Sutton. The sixth +person was Ada Snow, with the well-bred composure which +concealed her innate shyness, and in the white dotted swiss +she had worn for ten years past, ever since she had graduated, +in fact, and which still looked decently presentable. +Dosia was gay and conversational, as she was expected to +be, the party being hers; she had began to feel the daughter +of luxury, if not of Mrs. Leverich, and accepted the +honors with the easily accustomed grace that is born of admiration +and security, conscious every moment through it +all of that bond between herself and Lawson. He looked +boyish and happy. Later, in a talk about skating, he offered +to teach her to skate the next day if the ice held, and +Mrs. Leverich, to whom Dosia looked, expecting her to invent +some excuse, approved at once, and planned to send +for skates the first thing in the morning. His quizzical eye +seized unerringly on the signs of withdrawal in her, and +brought the blush of compunction to her cheek, while Mr. +Leverich jocosely deplored that he could not take the +office of trainer instead. Mr. Sutton, who had sat by her at +dinner, and hovered amorously over her in the way a girl +detests in a man she does not care for, might have been +mysteriously rebuffed by the suggestion of Lawson’s intimacy, +for he devoted himself for the rest of the short +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153'></a>153</span> +evening to Ada Snow, who dropped into one of her statuesque +angles on an ottoman, and talked to him in her low, +trained voice with modestly confidential deference, until he +left, quite early. His attention to Miss Snow had not kept +him, however, from picking up Dosia’s handkerchief twice +when she happened to drop it. +</p> +<p> +Billy Snow created a diversion by coming in at half-past +ten for his sister, and stating casually that he had +seen the doctor’s carriage stopping at the Alexander house +as he passed. +</p> +<p> +“As you passed <em>now</em>?” cried Dosia, startled. “Are the +children worse?” An unacknowledged compunction, which +she had felt through all her pleasures, at leaving the sick +household, sprang swiftly to the front. “Oh, I’m so afraid +Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there at once +and see!” +</p> +<p> +“If they only had a telephone,” began Mrs. Leverich, +for the twentieth time. “I can send——” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, if I could only go myself!” interrupted Dosia, +looking utterly miserable in her sudden wild anxiety. +</p> +<p> +“You could have the carriage—but James is asleep.” +Mrs. Leverich looked almost as miserable as Dosia in her +baffled hospitality. “But if you don’t mind walking——” +</p> +<p> +“No—oh, no!” +</p> +<p> +“Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some +wraps in the hall; I’ll pin your dress up, so that you won’t +need to take the time to change it. <em>Must</em> you go, Ada? Then +you can all walk down together. Mr. Leverich would have +offered to go with you himself, I know, Dosia,—wouldn’t +you, Joseph?—if it were not for his cold. But Lawson can +take you, of <em>course</em>!” +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154'></a>154</span>CHAPTER ELEVEN</h2> +<p> +Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, +had plenty to keep her hands busy, and yet, as +there was no particular anxiety attaching to the +disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the +unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of +thought at the same time, so that little occupations really +occupied only a small corner of her mind, and the larger +part was continually taken up with the subject of larger interest—herself. +While she rocked the children and sang +to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, +and took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, +she was unceasingly traversing a country wherein +she walked alone and in exile. The quarantine had shut her +in more rigorously upon herself; there were now no distractions. +Her husband was more anxious about the children +than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so +much was thrown upon her; he had wanted to get a trained +nurse at once, but after her assurances that she did not +mind staying in, that her exertions did not tire her, and +that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted +this version without further question or comment, and went +about his affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her +own department. It is a well-known fact that quarantine, +the observance of which is exacted down to the last second +of its limit from the women of a household, does not affect +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155'></a>155</span> +the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin +thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as +possible about being much with the children. He stood +obediently outside of the nursery door and talked to them +from there when Lois said, “You had better not come in.” +When she refused a service offered by him, he did not press +it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his +dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again +to spend the long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, +at houses where there were no children to be kept from contagion, +and where he could talk to men. He was really so +busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in any +way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to +be able to leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, +besides, a curious hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously +resented—she seemed to hold herself aloof from +him, and there was no allurement to follow. That temporary +indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, +with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference +because they do allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship +at will—this had been pushed too far. It is a dangerous +thing to let love slip away, even for the pleasure of +regaining it. +</p> +<p> +It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should +have to stand alone now. She could have done this willingly +if she had been by herself, but to stand alone in this dual +solitude, where she might have had support—she could +not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with the pity +of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, red-eyed, +upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of +her effort. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156'></a>156</span> +</p> +<p> +There is little provision made in most girlhood for that +independence of living which marriage unexpectedly forces +upon a woman, in many instances, in almost as great a degree +as when she is thrown out into the world upon her +own resources. To be high and fine, rational and spirited, +cheerful and loving, quite by one’s self, without audience +or applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the +muscles are little trained. A woman can reach almost any +height on a spurt for praise or recognition; but to get up, +sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, care for the children, +order the meals, as a rational human being whose business +it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no +personality attached to it—to have it taken for granted +that she would naturally order her life as suited her best, +and desired no interference—it was like being pushed out +into the cold. +</p> +<p> +If Justin’s indifference was unexplainable to Lois, it was +equally mysterious to him that she expected daily to be +urged to seek amusement, to “take something” for her +cold, to stay in if it were wet or to go out if it were dry, to +avoid overwork, not to sew too much, and to be sure and +rest in the afternoon—all the little kindly round of woman’s +sympathies that keep the heart warm. Justin had been +brought up in the good old-fashioned way by a mother +who, while requiring obedience and honesty from her sons, +never required them to think of anybody else. In his conduct +now he did entirely as he would be done by. He hated +to be noticed, himself, in little ways; he did as he pleased, +with the directness that is the inheritance of centuries of +predominance, but he had become affectionately parrot-wise +in some of the sentences he found were conducive to his wife’s +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157'></a>157</span> +happiness. In his new absorption he had forgotten the sentences; +he was deeply occupied with his own affairs. When +Lois said to Zaidee, “Mamma is busy; she cannot attend to +you now,” she exemplified unconsciously her husband’s present +position toward herself. Many men regard women primarily +in the light of children; and the more occupied +Justin became in his own affairs, the more reluctant he became +to talk of them at home to this child who was his +wife. Her vivid surprise at normal conditions, the unnecessary +worry and shallow generalization of ignorance, irritated +him. He became more and more taciturn, though he was +always kind and affectionate, even if his kindness and affection +lacked, as she felt, the true inner glow; but in the state +of mind which Lois had now made her own, no evidence +of affection, however great on the part of her husband, +would have meant anything to her more than momentarily, +for it was seen afterwards through a medium +which at once distorted and nullified, and not even the +complete absorption in and surrender to herself that +she craved could have satisfied the insatiable. She was drifting +to a place among the great and terrible company of +nerve-centered people, revolving wheels of centripetal force, +sweeping into their own restless orbit all with which they +come in contact as they go on their devastating way +through the universe. +</p> +<p> +Dosia, on the night when she had hurried down to the +house with Lawson Barr, had found nothing out of the +ordinary; the doctor had been delayed until late by a case +of more insistence, that was all. She came down, however, +on other evenings, luxuriously cloaked and wrapped, rosy +and smiling, with radiant eyes, and held rapid conversations +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158'></a>158</span> +with Lois down-stairs, while Lawson waited in the +hall, or sometimes went on farther and came back for her. +Lois herself had never considered Lawson of importance, +although she had warned Dosia against him; his sympathetic +manner now pleased her. As the children improved, +the measles threatened to become at once epidemic and more +virulent in the town, so that it was thought wise to avoid +comment by having no communication by daylight with +the Alexander household. Dosia was thus, for a few minutes +at a time, Lois’ one social link with the outside world, +for Justin, as she said bitterly, told her nothing. After +three weeks of solitude and self-communing the barriers +began to give way. +</p> +<p> +She was glad to hear her husband come in one afternoon +much earlier than usual. Something had been said the day +before about her going out for a drive. Her heart beat at +the sound of his voice, and she ran down-stairs eagerly, +but checked herself, as she had a way of doing lately, when +she came near him. Her face, devoid of expression, was +lifted to his to be kissed; for all her forbidding manner, +she was ready to thaw if he would only take the trouble +to shine directly upon her. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, +and she felt the invading monitions of happiness, in +spite of herself, as he kissed her, saying at once hurriedly, +if very kindly: +</p> +<p> +“I’ve got to dress and take the five-o’clock train back +to town.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” She was chilled to ice. “Won’t you be here to +dinner?” +</p> +<p> +“Why, no. Girard—do you remember my speaking of +him? He’s sent me a ticket for the Western Club dinner +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159'></a>159</span> +in town to-night. There will be fine speaking; not that I +care for that particularly, but it is really important for me +to be there. There are not many tickets; I’m in luck to +get one.” He stopped irresolutely. “You don’t mind my +going? I thought you’d be with the children.” +</p> +<p> +“No, I don’t mind your going.” She added under her +breath, “And it wouldn’t make any difference to you if +I did.” +</p> +<p> +“What did you say?” +</p> +<p> +“Nothing.” +</p> +<p> +“If it were any place to which you could have gone with +me, I would have refused.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” +</p> +<p> +He looked at her uneasily, but said no more; she heard +him whistling softly as he was getting dressed. In reality +his conscience was uncomfortably pricking him. He felt +that he had let her bear too much alone, that he might +have been more thoughtful—he couldn’t exactly tell how. +He registered a mental vow to take her out somewhere the +very first chance he got. +</p> +<p> +He came in the nursery to say good-by to the children +and to her. She asked: +</p> +<p> +“What train will you take back to-night?” +</p> +<p> +“I don’t suppose I can get anything earlier than the +twelve.” +</p> +<p> +“You mean the one that gets here at a quarter to one?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, of course. Don’t sit up for me.” +</p> +<p> +He was gone; the door had closed behind him—he was +gone. Almost before she realized it, he was gone. It could +not be—she was not ready to have him go yet! There were +so many things she had meant to say to him. She would +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160'></a>160</span> +have rushed to the door to call him back, but Redge cried +out for her. She took him from his crib and ran to the +window with him, over the floor that was strewed with play-things—Justin +was already nearly out of sight. He must, +he must, he <em>must</em> come back again! He must. She willed it +so intensely that he must feel it, if he loved her, and come +back. If you willed things hard enough, they happened; +people said so. She was willing, willing, <em>willing</em> him to +come back. She watched the clock, and listened for the +sound of the passing train. Seven minutes to walk to the +station—seven minutes to walk back again, as she willed +him to come. Thirty minutes had passed; he had stopped +here, there, or yon, on his way home. An hour—and he +had not come! She had willed in vain. He had gone. +</p> +<p> +From six o’clock until a quarter of one,—until one +o’clock, for the midnight train was always late,—that was +seven hours. Seven hours to wait, seven hours to think and +think. She gave the children their supper; she laughed +with them, she played with them, helped the nurse undress +them, sang them to sleep, with that dreadful undercurrent +of thinking all the time. She had her dinner, eating without +knowing what she ate, trying to take a long while at it. +Afterwards she lighted the lamp in the little drawing-room, +took out her sewing, and sat down there to wait. There were +five hours and a half yet. +</p> +<p> +There was a ring at the door-bell about eight o’clock, +which proved the herald of little Mrs. Snow, holding in +one hand a provisionary vial. +</p> +<p> +“No, thank you, I won’t sit down,” she said, in answer +to Lois’ invitation. “I just ran over to see if you could let +me have a little cough medicine for William to-night, he +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161'></a>161</span> +has a little tickle in his throat that keeps him coughing, +I knew it was no use telling <em>him</em> to get any medicine, so +I said to Bertha, ‘Bertha, I’m just going to run over to +Mrs. Alexander’s and see if she can lend me a spoonful of +cough mixture.’ I’ll have my bottle renewed to-morrow.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m sorry,” said Lois, wondering at her power of suspending +a heartbreak, “but we haven’t a drop left in the +house.” +</p> +<p> +“There is so much bronchitis around now,” continued +Mrs. Snow, oblivious of the fact that the same impetus that +had brought her as far as the Alexanders’ would have +taken her to the druggist’s. “No, thank you; I can’t sit +down.” +</p> +<p> +She stood by the mantel in a drooping attitude that gave +her a plaintive effect, in combination with her soft crinkled +black garments and her small white, delicate, finely wrinkled +face. Mrs. Snow had, as a usual thing, only two tones to +her voice—the plaintive and the inquisitive; the former was +in evidence now. +</p> +<p> +“There is so much bronchitis around now. I think if +you can take hold of it at the first beginning, with a little +cough medicine, when it’s just a tickle in the throat, you +can often save a great deal.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose you can,” said Lois. She felt a vague duty +of conversation. “Isn’t William well?” +</p> +<p> +His mother shook her head. “No, my dear, not at all, +though he will not own it. I ask him every time he comes +in the house how he feels, and sometimes he won’t even answer +me.” She heaved a sigh. “You’re not looking well +yourself, Mrs. Alexander; you mustn’t take care of the children +too hard.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162'></a>162</span> +</p> +<p> +“Oh, nothing ever hurts <em>me</em>,” said Lois in a hard +voice. +</p> +<p> +“I’m glad they’re so nearly well. I met Mr. Alexander +to-night on his way back to town. It was a pity you couldn’t +have gone with him; if you had sent for me, I could have +come and stayed with the children as well as not.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, thank you,” said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“I suppose you don’t see much of Miss Dosia?” +</p> +<p> +“No, not much as yet.” +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Snow cleared her throat deprecatingly. “A number +of people have been asking me lately if she and Mr. Barr +were engaged.” +</p> +<p> +“Engaged! Why, of course not,” exclaimed Lois contemptuously. +“There is not the slightest question of such +a thing; in fact, she dislikes him. He simply takes her +around because she is at his sister’s.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” said Mrs. Snow, “Miss Dosia dislikes Mr. Barr—does +she really, now! I’m sure I told everybody that I +knew they couldn’t be engaged, although they do seem to +be so much together. So she dislikes him; Ada dislikes +him, too. There’s something about Mr. Barr so—well, you +can’t exactly tell what it is, can you, but it’s there; something +that’s not exactly like a gentleman—not like Mr. +Sutton. Ada likes Mr. Sutton so much. It’s such a relief +to me to find that Miss Dosia is so sensible; she’s a sweet +young girl—a little fond of attention, perhaps, but many +young girls <em>are</em>. No, I thank you, my dear, I cannot sit +down, I <em>must</em> go now. I don’t think you’re looking well; +you must be careful and not overdo.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, nothing hurts me,” said Lois again, with a peculiar +little smile. The insinuation about Dosia did no more than +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163'></a>163</span> +swell the undercurrent of bitterness by another unnecessary +drop. +</p> +<p> +And Mrs. Snow was gone. Lois had not wanted her, but +how alone it was now! Even Mrs. Snow had seen that +she did not look well—had pitied her. +</p> +<p> +The children were asleep up-stairs, the maids were in +the kitchen. The clock in the hall ticked. People walked +past the house: a man alone—another man; young people, +laughing and catching up with those ahead; some shuffling, +hobbling toilers; then the light step of a woman returning +from work; then another man. Occasionally, but not +often, a carriage rolled down the street. The footsteps +were always clear and distinct from the corner below to +the upper crossing; when it was a train-time, there were +more footsteps coming and going—between trains only +the solitary footsteps again. She heard the man in the +house across the street run up the steps to his front door, +and turn the key in the lock. The door opened and shut +behind him. The clock in the hall struck the half-hour—it +was half-past eight. Oh, if there had been a life-time of +misery in that last half-hour, what was there to come? An +eternity, an eternity of desolation! +</p> +<p> +If she were to will him now to come home, if in the +midst of the glittering lights and flowers he could hear +her cry to him,—“<em>Justin, I want you!</em>”—he would <em>have</em> +to come. “Justin, I want you!” She rose and paced the +floor, sobbing out the words. No, he would not hear her—he +did not want to hear her. Perhaps he was laughing now. +She would have gone to <em>him</em>, if he had wanted her, though +she had had to crawl upon her knees through thorns and +briers. Ah, how she would have gone! A rush of blinding +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164'></a>164</span> +tears filled her eyes. He did not care. She had been ready +to cling to him, and sob her heart out on his breast, and +beg him to love her and kiss her and stay with her, and +he had not seen. She had asked—in the tone that mutely +pleaded—<em>You will not leave me so long?</em>—“The train +that gets here at a quarter to one?” and he had answered, +“Yes, of course.” That was all. If her lips had touched +his so coldly when he had said good-by, it was because she +had longed to have him notice it, and ask her why. But +he had not noticed the coldness, he had not asked her why. +He had not wanted any more warmth in her. He did not +care! +</p> +<p> +There came swift moments in those long and passion-freighted +hours when the darkened, distorted vision +cleared in wonderful flashes that brought the healing of +light. In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, +not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the +prey of frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly +beloved, a happy mother of little children, the mistress of +comforts that her husband had won for her, the appointed +dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly beloved, the true +owner of her husband’s heart, a woman whose work it was +to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be +more and more his helper, his lover. Even as this glimpse +was shut out again, there was the piercing thought: If +that were real, and what her darkened eyes beheld untrue! +Things are what they are, no matter how one’s distorted +vision sees them. If it were really true, no matter +how she saw it now, that she was a wife tenderly beloved, +with happiness within her grasp, and a miserable woman +indeed only that she was blind to its possibilities! She had +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165'></a>165</span> +said, <em>The train that gets here at a quarter to one?</em> with +what a longing for him not to leave her, and he had answered, +<em>Yes, of course</em>. Nothing could make those words +any different. And she wanted him, and he did not care—he +did not care. Justin, Justin! The long, long, torturing +fangs of self-pity had her by the throat. +</p> +<p> +The house was silent, the children slept, the maids had +gone up-stairs. The hours wore on into the night. The +footsteps passed up and down the street only at long intervals. +The air grew chill in the house. In the quiet, +the watcher could hear the trains far, far off across the +flats. +</p> +<p> +At twelve o’clock the spring rain began to fall, gently +at first, and then in torrents, coming straight down with +a rushing sound that blotted out both trains and footsteps. +And the train was late, as she had said it would be, +it was after one o’clock when Justin ran up the steps with +that firm, quick tread of his, opened the door, and came +in. His face was bright and eager; he was full yet of the +pleasure of the evening, and anxious to make her a sharer +of it. He turned to speak to his wife, and the glow on his +countenance died out instantly as with a breath from the +tomb. +</p> +<p> +Lois sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing him. The light +had gone out in the lamp, and the one gas-burner above, +with its meager flicker, cast the room into the desolate +half-shadows that speak of the late hours of the night. +She had worn a scarlet house-gown in the evening; the +trailing folds swept the floor around her slippered feet +now, her bare arms gleamed below the sleeves that only +reached beyond the elbow. Around her was flung a gray +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166'></a>166</span> +cloak, buttoned askew at the throat, and in one of her +folded hands she held a black lace scarf. Her face was +white, and her large eyes stared straight before her +rigidly, yet with a wild gleam in them; as he looked at her +she rose and moved as if to pass him. +</p> +<p> +He stepped forward with his dripping overcoat half +off. +</p> +<p> +“Where are you going?” +</p> +<p> +She made no answer, but looked at him as she edged on +farther to the door. +</p> +<p> +“Where are you going? Answer me.” +</p> +<p> +Her lips stiffly framed the word: “Out.” +</p> +<p> +“Out! What do you mean?” He spoke roughly, in a +terrible anxiety and anger mixed together. “What are +you working yourself up to all this foolishness for?” +</p> +<p> +Again she did not answer. +</p> +<p> +He went on more sternly, yet with an undercurrent of +entreaty: +</p> +<p> +“Come in here and take off those things and be rational. +Why do you look at me like that?” +</p> +<p> +“You don’t care—any more.” +</p> +<p> +Oh, if he would snatch her to him now, and press her to +his breast, that she might feel his protecting arms around +her! If he would kiss her now with the kisses she remembered, +and love her, and comfort her, and send this horrible +spirit out of her! How could he not know that that +was the way to exorcise it, that it was what her spent soul +craved? How could he keep from putting his arms around +her when she was in agony? +</p> +<p> +Never in his life had her husband been less likely to do +so. The wild defiance in her eyes would have made any +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167'></a>167</span> +woman repulsive to him; he had all a man’s horror of a +“scene,” mingled with a deeper disgust that she should +be the actress in it, and his anger was the more that he +felt the whole thing to be unnecessary. Underneath this +anger, however, was the sense of responsibility for his +wife’s welfare, such as one would have for a child, no +matter how outrageous. +</p> +<p> +“You don’t care!” She whispered the words again. +</p> +<p> +“No, I don’t care for you when you act like this.” His +voice was even sterner now; it was time that this travesty +came to an end. +</p> +<p> +She stared at him as before. “Then I’ll go!” she said +wildly, and slipped past him out of the door and into the +rain, running with swift yet uncertain footsteps down the +black, wet street, listening, listening all the time for him +to follow—listening as she ran. She walked more slowly +now as she listened; she had gone nearly a block already +toward the river. Oh, would he let her go? For one awful +moment she feared that this phantasm might become a +reality; and yet she knew, as well as she knew that she +lived, that he would not let it be so. Yes, yes, there was his +quick, sharp tread at last, gaining on her. He walked like +the angry man he was, but the sound brought a furtive +thrill of bliss to her. How strong he was when he was +angry! He had had to notice her at last; he could think +of nothing but her now. +</p> +<p> +She trembled as he came up to her. He only said in a +matter-of-fact tone, “It’s time to stop this now; you’ll +get wet.” He took her by the arm and turned her around, +heading for home; the mere touch of his guiding hand on +her arm sent warmth through her icy veins. She trembled +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168'></a>168</span> +as her feet tottered beside his, her strength suddenly spent +with the breaking up of her long passion. +</p> +<p> +Neither spoke as they walked home. When they were +in the house again, he unfastened her cloak with awkward +fingers, and took the dripping scarf from her wet hair, +throwing them on a chair. +</p> +<p> +She leaned her head upon his breast, clinging to him +with an inarticulate murmur for forgiveness, and he +smoothed her hair for a moment. She raised her face to +his to be kissed, and he kissed her. She humbly asked +nothing; she would be satisfied with anything now. She +went up to her room, as he bade her, and when she was in +bed, he came and sat down by her, and held the hand she +mutely placed in his, as her imploring eyes asked. But he +had to put a force upon himself to do it. The whole play +was distasteful and repugnant beyond words to him; it +weakened every bond that bound him to her. He sought +for no self-analyzing causes. He had so much care upon +him now that more than ever in his life before he needed +diversion, sympathy, love, rest—rest above everything else +on earth. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169'></a>169</span>CHAPTER TWELVE</h2> +<p> +To live in the same house, to meet not only at the +accepted times, but in all the little passing ways—on +the stairs, coming in and out of the door; +to meet also in all the little unpremeditated ways that are +really premeditated—the going to the library for a book, +the searching over this, that, and the other, with all its +pretended inconsequence and surprise; the abstraction of +two people from the same room at the same time on different +pretexts; the lingerings while the minutes grew +toward the hour, the sudden hurried partings at a foot-step, +the reunion for just a moment more when the foot-step +did not come that way—all this unnoticed and casual +intercourse with its half-secrecy and hint of the forbidden +becomes a large factor in its relation to after-events, +when the participants are a man and a woman. There is no +influence so little regarded for the young by those in +authority as the tremendous influence of propinquity. +</p> +<p> +Among all the social comings and goings at the Leverichs’, +the excitement of Lawson’s presence held its place +with Dosia. The sudden sight of his olive profile and his +lithe figure, his cool, appraising gaze, his “Well, young +lady?” with its ironic tone that yet conveyed a subtle +kindness, his lazy, caressing expostulation, “Why not, +when we are friends?”—these things made heart-beats +that Dosia took pains to assure herself were of a purely +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170'></a>170</span> +Platonic nature, when she stopped at rare occasions to +take tally of her emotions, though there was a continual +unacknowledged inner protest, in spite of her yielding, +which made her resolve each day to withdraw a little on +the next. But they never talked of love; they talked only +of goodness, or art, or music, or about the way you felt +about different subjects, or little teasing things, like why +she drew her mouth down at the corners when he looked at +her, or why she had seemed to disapprove the night +before. They were bound together by the hope of higher +things. She met him always in the morning with the bright +uplifting smile that said, “I know you will repay my +confidence—for <em>I</em> believe in you!” +</p> +<p> +“I really wish Lawson would go away,” said Mrs. Leverich, +one day, as the two sat over their afternoon tea +together. +</p> +<p> +“Why?” asked Dosia, with the suddenly concentrated +composure his name always brought her outwardly. “I +thought you said last week that he had improved so much.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, he’s had one of his good streaks lately; and +he <em>is</em> a sweet fellow when he’s nice—he was the dearest +<em>little</em> boy! Lawson can twist me around his little finger +when he wants to; he knows that he can get money out of +me every time, even when he oughtn’t to have it. But he +can’t keep up this sort of thing long, you know, he is so +restless; there’s bound to be a breakdown afterwards. I +dread it; the breakdowns get worse, now, every time.” +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps there will be no breakdown, after all,” said +Dosia, in an even voice, but with that sudden deep sensation +of disenchantment which his sister’s words always +brought to her, and which lay upon her spirit like a living +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171'></a>171</span> +thing, dragging her fancy in chains. It was not alone +Mrs. Leverich’s words, either, that had this power; when +anyone spoke of Lawson it brought the same displeasing +uneasiness, followed by the wonted eager remorsefulness +later, when she saw him. But through each phase one +foundational sense held good—he was not at all the kind +of man she would ever want to marry; the whole attraction +of the situation was in the fact that one could be so nobly +intimate, and still keep off the danger-ground. Once or +twice he had seemed to be infringing on it, and then she +had turned him aside with sweet solemnity and additional +inner excitement. +</p> +<p> +These were days indeed! It was Lent, but there were all +the minor pleasures of luncheons and card-parties, and +little evening entertainments held at Mrs. Leverich’s hospitable +mansion. It mattered not whether there was anything +going on in the town or not; society focused at her +house, with Dosia for the central point. When she thought +of going back again to Lois it was with a blank shiver. +</p> +<p> +Lois, indeed, had not been well lately; the children were +out of quarantine, but she had a sore throat, and kept +her room under the care of a trained nurse. Dosia had not +seen her, but only Justin, who looked tired and older. +Dosia was not to return now until after Easter and after +the ball—Mrs. Leverich was going to give a ball for +Dosia; it was to be, in a sense, her “coming out.” +</p> +<p> +She had by this time become quite used to her position +as daughter of the house, accepted luxuries as a matter +of course, and even suggested improvements, when she +found that it pleased Mrs. Leverich to have her do so. +She received that lady’s embraces gracefully, brought +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172'></a>172</span> +newspapers unasked for Mr. Leverich, and gave orders +to the maids for her hostess. She had grown accustomed +to being waited on, petted, made much of, and given +presents, and blossomed like the rose under this vernal +shower of kindness; her dress, her manner, her very expression, +betrayed the ease of elegance. She did not like +to own, even to herself, that long conversations with Mrs. +Leverich were somewhat tiresome when the subject was +neither Lawson nor herself, and she learned to get out of +the way of too many tête-à-têtes. This did not keep her +from having a fervent gratitude for all the blessings of +the situation, and a real love for the dispenser of them. +Now, when the time of her stay was narrowing to a close, +she clung to each day as if it neared the end of life; every +pleasure was doubly dear in that it was the last of its +kind. To be sure, the fairy prince had not arrived as yet—Bailey +Girard, who had come to the house while she was +still a stranger to it, had been half across the Continent +since. It is one of the shabby jests that life is always +playing us, that two who have met once as wayfarers on +the same road, with the memory of that one meeting so +curiously vivid and intimate that it seems as if the fate of +the next turning must bring them within touch again, +are yet kept out of sight or sound of each other for miles +by the slight accidents of travel. Fate, when we count +upon her, is apt to be extraordinarily slow in working out +her fulfillments. +</p> +<p> +Dosia hailed with delight a proposition made by Mrs. +Leverich to get up a party and drive over one evening to +a neighboring town to hear a lecture given there by a +friend. The lecture was nothing, the friend not a very +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173'></a>173</span> +great attraction, but the expedition in itself gave an excuse +for a drive, and a supper on the return to the Leverich +mansion. It was early April, but the weather was +unseasonably warm, and there was a golden moon. They +were to go in a “barge”—the local name for a long, low, +uncovered wagon, with two lateral seats, holding about +thirty people. Mrs. Leverich had insisted on plenty of +lap-robes and extra wrappings and even umbrellas, in spite +of remonstrances. She herself could not go, but there were +plenty of chaperons, little Mrs. Snow having been pressed +into service as a substitute at the last moment, with every +promise of mild evening weather especially beneficial to +rheumatism. +</p> +<p> +Some one had a bugle that woke the echoes as the +caravan drew up at each door to gather the different +segments of the party. Dosia felt wild with glee as she +bundled into the barge, amid merry shrieks and laughter, +and found herself seated by Mr. William Snow, while +Lawson took the place on the other side of her. Ada and +Mr. Sutton were farther down, with Mrs. Snow near them. +Opposite Dosia was a chaperon of the chaperons. +</p> +<p> +Dosia hardly knew what she was saying as she laughed +and talked with the crowd, while Lawson conversed across +with Mrs. Malcolmson, but the sense of his nearness never +left her. Billy at last got a chance to say to her in a low, +intense voice: +</p> +<p> +“Why are you always listening for what <em>he</em> says?” +</p> +<p> +Her glance followed his, and her color rose. +</p> +<p> +“Dear little Billy is rude; Billy must learn manners,” +she retorted gayly, but with a sharpness below the gayety. +</p> +<p> +“I don’t care whether it’s rude or not. Here I’m sitting +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174'></a>174</span> +by you for the first time this week, and you don’t seem +to hear a word I say. I’ve been trying to talk to you, and +you don’t pay the slightest attention.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, you poor child!” said Dosia. “Would it like some +candy?” +</p> +<p> +“It’s no use talking to me like that,” returned William +stubbornly. “I know you’re a year older than I am——” +</p> +<p> +“Two,” interpolated Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“It’s seventeen months and three days—but that’s +nothing to do with it. It’s no use your trying the grandmother +act—I could marry you, just the same, if I <em>am</em> +younger. Mrs. Stanford is two years older than her husband, +and Mrs. Taylor is five years older than hers. Lots +of people do it—but that’s not the point now. I’m miles +older than you in everything but years. I’ve had experience +of the world, and you haven’t.” His belligerent +tone softened, and he looked at her tenderly as he towered +above her, his blue eyes alight. “You need somebody to +take care of you. I don’t care whether you believe it or not, +I know what I’m talking about. I wish you’d drop that +fellow.” +</p> +<p> +“Why?” asked Dosia, with dangerous calm. +</p> +<p> +“Why? Because—you ought to know. He isn’t a +gentleman; he’s no good. He isn’t <em>fit</em>. If he was, don’t you +think he’d look out for you, and not take advantage the +way he does? If he had a decent spark in him, he’d never +let you be seen with him; he knows it, if you don’t. Why, +there have been times I’ve seen him when you wouldn’t pick +him up off the road with a pair of tongs.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Barr, will you fasten this cloak around me?” +said Dosia, in a clear voice. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175'></a>175</span> +</p> +<p> +She turned with her back to William and leaned a little +closer to Lawson, after he had helped her arrange the garment. +Lawson had made every resolution to take no advantage +of his position, but he was not proof against this +alluring moment; his warm hand with its long, tapering +fingers sought hers under cover of the lap-robe, and held +it while he still talked with apparent unconcern to his +matronly vis-à-vis. Once he looked around at Dosia with +those teasing eyes full of laughter, and yet of something +more. She could not drag her hand away without betraying +the struggle, as his closed more tightly over it, though +her riotous heart beat so that she feared it must get into +her voice, and there was an odd feeling as if she were +doing some one a wrong. Her fluttering was intoxication +to Lawson. +</p> +<p> +They drove for five miles with the early spring moonlight +shining silverly through the last rosy haze of the +sunset, the air sweet with the scent of green grass and +dewy blossomings. +</p> +<p> +Lawson did not look at Dosia as he helped her out of +the wagon, nor did he come in to listen to the lecture, +through which she sat pulsating at the thought of the +drive home, desiring yet fearing it. Would he be near her +then? Her question was answered. He helped to put everyone +else in the wagon, and they two came last. This time +their opposite neighbors were a young couple engrossed +in each other. Dosia’s quick eye took in the situation at +once. She was determined not to speak first, and they rode +for a while in silence; then he moved nearer, and asked in +a low tone: +</p> +<p> +“Why don’t you look at me?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176'></a>176</span> +</p> +<p> +“Why did you—hold my hand?” She spoke in a +whisper that he had to bend his head to hear. +</p> +<p> +“I might tell you a good many reasons—but one will +do. I am going away for good.” +</p> +<p> +“What?” She turned breathlessly, with a quick pang. +The night had grown very dark, but she could see the +gleam of his eyes and the outline of his olive face as it +leaned over her. “Why?” +</p> +<p> +“Because—” He stopped, and his quizzical look +changed into something deeper. “I believe I ought to. +I’ve had a sort of an offer out West, and it’s time I made a +change.” +</p> +<p> +“Is it to lead a new life?” asked Dosia, with deep and +tender solemnity. Mrs. Leverich’s words came back to her; +this, then, had been all planned. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, let us always hope so!” said Lawson lightly. +“Who knows? Perhaps I’ll turn into a highly respectable +individual and make money. You can’t be respectable without +money, I’ve tried it, and I know. I had a sort of an +opening in Central Africa which my dear brother-in-law +pressed upon me, but I decided against it.” +</p> +<p> +“Central Africa!” +</p> +<p> +“Yes. I appreciated Leverich’s feelings in the plan—you +can’t get back easily from Central Africa, if you get back +at all. So I’m going, for good or bad, to a nice little +mining-camp in Nevada, where you get your mail every +six weeks or so, and where you can go down into your +grave any way you please without scandalizing your +friends. I’ll be really quite out of the way.” +</p> +<p> +“Out of the way!” Her heart leaped with pride in him. +How little William knew of this man! +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177'></a>177</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, out of everybody’s way—and yours, dear little +girl. I’m not good enough for much, but perhaps I’m good +enough for that.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh,” said Dosia, distressed and fascinated by his tone +of real feeling. “But why—oh, I shall miss you so much—and +think of you—so much!” Her voice broke. “I +can’t bear to think of your going off in this way—so +lonely.” +</p> +<p> +There was a shriek from farther down the barge. “It’s +beginning to rain, it’s beginning to rain!” A wild +scramble ensued for cloaks and umbrellas. A furious +shower was descending almost with the words, and the +whole party slid off the two long seats into the straw on +the bottom of the barge, and cowered under the carriage-robes +pulled up around them for a shelter, showing only a +mass of umbrellas above. +</p> +<p> +Lawson’s quick movements had insured Dosia’s protection. +</p> +<p> +“You are not getting wet at all?” He bent over her +tenderly under the enveloping umbrella. +</p> +<p> +“Not at all,” she whispered. +</p> +<p> +It was as if everything were a confidence now. She +reverted to the subject of their conversation: +</p> +<p> +“Oh, do you think you will really not come back?” +</p> +<p> +He laughed. “Yes, I mean it—now. Of course, you +know that’s my chief fault—my resolutions are too frequently +writ on sand.” He spoke of his own weakness with +the bitter yet facile contempt which too often enervates +still more instead of strengthening. “Yes, I mean it. Do +you wonder I took your hand? Are you sorry I’m going—? +is my little friend sorry? She mustn’t be sorry; you know, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178'></a>178</span> +nobody is sorry—she must be glad to get rid of inc. Speak—and +say it.” +</p> +<p> +“No,” whispered Dosia. +</p> +<p> +He pressed her arm close to him, as he held her hand +and pulled the wraps around her, shifting the umbrella as +the wind changed. One of the men in front lighted a +lantern and held it out in the rain at arm’s length, to +glimmer ahead in the pitchy darkness and show the road +to the driver, who held the horses at a walk. The wagon +lurched and tipped in mud-holes and unexpected ridges +and depressions, running up once on the edge of a bank, +while the couples on the floor of it screamed and laughed. +There were muttered rolls of thunder in the distance. Rain +in the night had always brought back the scene of the +disaster to Dosia, but she only thought now that she could +not think. All of her that lived was living at this moment +here. +</p> +<p> +“Why are you so silent?” he murmured headily, after +an interval. +</p> +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> +<p> +“Is there anything else that you want to tell me?” +</p> +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, you do.” His voice had grown dangerously +tender. “What is it?” He waited again, bending nearer. +“Don’t you want me to leave you—is that it? Don’t you +want me to leave you?” +</p> +<p> +“No,” whispered Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Then I’ll stay!” +</p> +<p> +His arm slid exultingly around her waist, and his hand +pressed her head down upon his shoulder, while she submitted +passively, a thing of suffocating heart-beats and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179'></a>179</span> +burning blushes, captive to she knew not what. “You +oughtn’t to have said that, you know, for now I’ll never go. +I’ll stay with you. Hush—keep still!” He held her firmly +as some one spoke from the front, and he answered in a +loud tone: +</p> +<p> +“Yes, Mrs. Malcolmson, it’s the right road. Swing the +lantern a little further around, Billy. Yes, that’s the old +white house; we turn there—it’s all right.” +</p> +<p> +He kept his attitude of attention for a few minutes, looking +from under the cover of his umbrella at the huddled +heaps and the umbrellas in front of him. Then Dosia felt +that he was coming back to her. She tried desperately to +rally her forces, to think if this was the man with whom +she wanted to spend her life, her husband for all her days. +Alas, she could not think! Some giant, unknown force had +sapped her power of thought. She weakly took his two +hands and tried to push his arm from around her waist +and to raise her head from his shoulder. His arm did not +move; her head sank back again. His lips were on hers—which +no man had ever touched before,—and those lips +now were Lawson’s. +</p> +<p> +“There was <em>one</em> girl kissed to-night,” announced Mrs. +Snow, as she took off her numerous layers of shawls and +worsted head-coverings in household conclave after her +return from the Leverichs’. +</p> +<p> +“It was perfectly disgraceful! Is there any hot water +on the stove, Bertha? I want a glassful to drink. I hope +you left a piece of stale bread in the oven for me, I feel a +little need of something. Oh, yes, of course there was a +supper, we had lobster Newburg and champagne, but I +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180'></a>180</span> +didn’t take any; a cup of beef-tea or a little cereal would +have suited me much better. It’s a mercy if I haven’t taken +my death of cold. It was Dosia Linden’s goings-on that I +was speaking of; she’s a bold sort of a piece, evidently, +quite different from what I thought. Sh—William’s gone +up-stairs, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Snow dropped her voice mysteriously. +“My dear, she and Lawson Barr sat hidden +under an umbrella all the way home, and never spoke a +word. You can’t tell <em>me</em>! Never said a word that anyone +could hear. When she came into the dining-room at the +Leverichs’, her face was scarlet, and she couldn’t even look +at anyone, though she talked enough for ten while he +played some queer thing on the piano. You can just ask +Ada.” +</p> +<p> +Miss Bertha had preserved an immovable countenance +throughout the monologue, but her eye now sought her +sister’s and received a swift glance of confirmation from +that silent and discreet damsel. The confirmation brought +a shock to Miss Bertha—fond of the trivial and unimportant +in gossip, the scandal which hurt the young devolved +a hurt on her, too. As mothers who have lost children +feel a tenderness for those who do not belong to them, so +Miss Bertha, who had lost her youth, felt toward the youth +in others. Her mother’s small mind yet had an uncanny +power of partial divination, gained from years of experience +and espial, that irritated while it impressed. +</p> +<p> +“Her face was probably red from the wind and the +rain,” said Miss Bertha, in a matter-of-fact tone, regardless +of her mother’s contemptuous sniff. “What kind of a time +did you have, Ada? Did you see anything of Mr. Sutton?” +</p> +<p> +“Just a little,” replied Ada temperately. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181'></a>181</span> +</p> +<p> +This time it was the mother’s and Miss Bertha’s eyes +that telegraphed. “Ada, my dear, you may take my shawls +up-stairs. She was with him <em>all</em> the time. I hope he saw +enough of Dosia Linden’s bold actions to disgust him, at +any rate. Yes, my dear, everything was managed very beautifully +at the Leverichs’, and it was all very elegant; but +she is a little common—Mrs. Leverich, I mean. She was +really quite put out because we hadn’t driven back faster. +There was a Mr. Girard who had come out from the city, +and she wanted Miss Dosia to meet him before he left—he +had just come back from somewhere in the West. She +really made quite a time about it. And there’s a sort of vulgar +display about her that I don’t care for; you can see +she’s Lawson’s brother. Oh, well, don’t take me up so, +Bertha; you know what I mean, well enough. You have such +a sharp way with you sometimes, like your dear father’s +family. William—<em>Wil-liam</em>!” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, mother.” +</p> +<p> +“I want you to come down and put the cat out and +lock up at once,—oh, you did, did you?—and kissed me +good night, too, you say? I didn’t notice it. And did you +empty the water-pan under the ice-box, and bank up the +fire, and water the big palm? Oh, very well. Then, William—Wil-liam! +I want you to come down again, now, and take +a rhinitis tablet, after the dampness of to-night.” +</p> +<p> +There was an emphatic sound from above. +</p> +<p> +“He’s shut his door,” said Miss Bertha. +</p> +<p> +Ah, what does a girl think who has given up all her bright +anticipations for a man whom she knows is not worthy? +Lawson had pressed Dosia’s hand only when he said good +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182'></a>182</span> +night,—there were others around,—but he had looked at +her lips. She knew how his felt upon them; their touch—more +than all the murmured elusive questions and answers—had +made her his. +</p> +<p> +She knelt down by the big chair in her room, and buried +her hot face in the cushions, to try and think at last, with +a suddenly sinking heart that feared when it should have +rejoiced. He had told her that no one could make him go, +now that she loved him; he would stay here. “And work +for me?” she had asked, and he had answered, “Yes, and +work for you.” She should be so happy now, so happy! +The perspective down which she had always seen her future +was suddenly shortened; this was the end. Lawson Barr, +the man she had been playing with at a delightful, enthralling, +forbidden game, he was the man with whom she +had promised to spend her life, her husband for all her +days; that which was to have been her uplifting was instead +something for her to carry. Suppose that she had +more of those awful, clear-sighted moments which had disenchanted +her when his sister spoke? No, no; that must +not happen, that must not! Dosia had acquiesced in what +was said about him, with the large-eyed uncomprehension +of the girl who pretends that she understands what everyone +expects her to; it meant something—she was afraid to +have anyone tell her what; she pretended to understand, +because she was afraid some one would let her know of +half-divined, unmentionable things. He was not—good; he +drank—people despised him: but he clung to her, and she +had let him kiss her, oh, not only once or twice, but many, +many times. She knew in her heart, she knew, that he was +what they said; but it was to be her work to help him +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183'></a>183</span> +always. When she had been with him hitherto, there +had always been the excitement of feeling that the +claim was temporary, to hold or not, at will, a mere +pretense of a claim. Now it was real. She was bound +forever! +</p> +<p> +Was the moment of disenchantment upon her now? She +did not deceive herself—too late she owned the truth. What +was the worst? He was weak—then she must be strong. +She thought of herself in years to come. People said you +couldn’t reform a man who drank—her father had been +very strong on this point. She had thought of it all before, +to be sure; but now—now it came home. She imagined herself +keeping his house for him, getting his meals—perhaps +with children; waiting, listening suspiciously for his returning +footsteps; trying to keep him “straight,”—perhaps +not succeeding. Yes, she must succeed! People looked +down on him—so they would look down on her. And while +her clear and pure nature reasserted itself, and thought and +tried pathetically to find out truth alone, her cheeks still +burned, her senses owned his sway. Those intoxicating moments +forced themselves upon her, whether she would or no. +But the truth—the truth below that, the truth was that +she did not love him. You can carry any burden if you have +the strong wings of love, but she had them not. What was +to have been the crowning of her maidenhood had come +to this—a sacrifice to the baser, and without love. Nay, +not that, not quite that! The maternal spirit in Dosia rose +and yearned over this outcast, whom nobody loved, with +a tenderness which owned no thought of self; she must +never think of herself any more, but only what was best +for him. She was to be his wife. The word brought a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184'></a>184</span> +choking feeling, with its thrill of mystery. She was so young—so +young! Could she keep up a sacrifice always? Why +had she not been able to think in this way until now? The +answer came clearly in her search for truth: because she +would not let herself do so. She had been warned—she +had been warned. +</p> +<p> +“Pray—it helps.” That was what she had said to him. +Ah, yes! She slid to her knees; her only real help was in +Heaven. She must keep her promise! She must always love +him whom nobody loved, and trust him whom nobody +trusted. Perhaps—perhaps when he kissed her again—She +put the thought away, so that she, a child, might +speak straight to God. And while she prayed Lawson was +coming down-stairs with his hat on. +</p> +<p> +“You are not going out?” His sister barred the way, +in a purple velvet gown, and laid a plump jeweled hand +on his sleeve. The lights were already out in the drawing-room, +and, beyond, the servants were removing the last +traces of the supper. +</p> +<p> +He did not answer for a moment, looking at her with +hard eyes, void of expression save for a certain tenseness. +It was a look she knew. Then he answered +roughly: +</p> +<p> +“I’m going in on the twelve-o’clock train with some of +the boys. It’s no good to talk.” +</p> +<p> +“Lawson! not now.” Her tone was angry. “Go up-stairs—to +bed.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, I guess—not!” said Lawson. He swept her hand +from his arm, and was out of the door and running quickly +down the steps before she turned. +</p> +<div><a name='i184' id='i184'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i007' id='i007'></a> +<img src="images/i184.jpg" alt="It was a look she knew" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>It was a look she knew</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185'></a>185</span></div> +<p> +Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart +beating with a rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. +She was his, though she had been warned. +</p> +<p> +Warned—yes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world +of chaperons and parents and guardians and people who +knew! +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186'></a>186</span>CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2> +<p> +It was the night of Mrs. Leverich’s grand ball. Dosia +was “coming out.” +</p> +<p> +The preparations had been going on for the entire +week since the drive. The great house had been cleaned +from top to bottom, the floors waxed, the state silver +brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half +a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand +orders, to select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement +that was made or thought of required discussion—what +furniture was to be taken up in the attic and what +left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, +where the musicians were to take their stand; how many +small tables would be needed for the serving of the supper +that was to come from town. Leverich himself had said +there was to be no expense spared, and he would see to the +wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of +his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there +had been a delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her +own name on them, and tried to realize that this was indeed +what Mr. Leverich called “her party.” He had insisted, +at his wife’s suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her gown +for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty +thanks for his kindness. There was something about Mr. +Leverich, with all his outer coarseness, that Dosia liked. +When she spoke in a certain way, he never answered wrong, +as his wife sometimes did; he understood. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187'></a>187</span> +</p> +<p> +Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her +lover. After her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him +at the breakfast to which she came down very late the next +morning, she was relieved to hear that he had suddenly +been called away earlier. He might not be back for a day +or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring +herself to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a +matter of course by everyone else. But there had been a +note from him, after the two days were up, postmarked +from the city—a mere line that said only, “For the girl +I love.” +</p> +<p> +“Will your brother be back for the party?” she asked +Mrs. Leverich, trying to keep her color steady and ask +the question casually. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, indeed,” the sister answered readily. “He may +be back at any minute now. He’ll be here on the day itself, +for certain; he knows I want his help about some things.” +</p> +<p> +Without Lawson’s actual presence Dosia could fashion +him into the man she loved, and pitch her own key of living +higher. With that higher thought and her simple earnestness +of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, more subtly sympathetic +with others; she was no girl any longer, she said +to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his +eyes claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the +thought. There was a strange tingling emotion in everything +connected with him. Ah, he would be worthy—he +must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence supplied +him with the halo. +</p> +<p> +All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the +Leverich house; it was impossible to overestimate its importance. +Every woman was having a new dress made, or +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188'></a>188</span> +was absorbingly renovating an old one, and every man was +sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody +was asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball +was to be outside the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,—she +had taken cold on the ride,—but it was to be one +of Miss Bertha’s rare appearances in public; she was to +chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former +was to be one of the receiving party. +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s week had been one surging thought of Lawson, +mixed with wild anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time +on the eventful night he had not arrived. +</p> +<p> +“Girard is coming, you know, after all,” said Leverich, +as they assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. +“I met him in town to-day, and was lucky enough to get +him. That’s the right man for you, Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +“For me!” Dosia laughed, with her rising color. “Mr. +Leverich, you are always trying to find the right man +for me. I don’t want him!” +</p> +<p> +“You haven’t met him yet,” said Leverich wisely. “He’s +the only fellow I know that I’d be willing to have you +marry. I told him you were waiting for him.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Dosia, in consternation. +</p> +<p> +“Now, don’t get excited,” said Leverich, smiling broadly. +“I said he’d have to work to get you—that you weren’t +the kind of a girl that came when she was beckoned to. +Oh, I put your stock ’way up.” +</p> +<p> +He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. +“No, I’ll confess! I didn’t say anything of +the kind; I was just romancing. I did tell him +he’d meet a pretty nice girl—you don’t mind that, do +you?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189'></a>189</span> +</p> +<p> +“You don’t deserve to be answered,” said Dosia. She +went and hung over his chair caressingly for a moment +before escaping from the room. +</p> +<p> +In spite of his recantation, the effect of having been +offered to Mr. Girard remained the real situation—one of +sudden and great intimacy. The thought of his coming +to-night added to her happiness; it brought the deep pleasure +inseparable from his name—it was as if something both +calm and protecting had been added, like the comfortable +presence of one who understood. He would sympathize, if +he knew, with that high motive of duty which must uphold +her, whether the glamour held or failed. He would know +what it was to feel that you must be true. +</p> +<p> +As she went through the still unlighted upper hall, she +came face to face with some one in an overcoat, a man who +carried a valise. +</p> +<p> +“Lawson!” she whispered. +</p> +<p> +For one dreadful moment she saw him in that way she +feared; shallow, insincere, unstable—was that all? Was +there something indefinably odd, indefinably strange? Then +she saw only the gaze that recalled everything—he loved +her! That thrilling thought carried all before it; her pulses +leaped to own him master, with a sudden lovely, trusting joy. +</p> +<p> +“No, no!” she whispered again, with falling eyelids, +as he made a movement toward her. His lips touched her +hair. “Not here! Some one is coming.” +</p> +<p> +“Later, then!” he murmured assentingly, with a gleaming +eye, as she eluded him and ran down the corridor to her +own room. +</p> +<p> +This was to be her ball, her ball! Her lover had come. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190'></a>190</span> +Her dress lay on the bed, a white and airy thing; her +white pearl-beaded slippers were below it on the floor. Every +chair was piled high with dainty whiteness of some sort. +Her dressing-table, with its candles and flowers, was like +a shrine for her beauty. The mirror reflected her with loosened +waves of hair and bare arms and feet, her bath-robe +slipping from her shoulders. It reflected her again, fresh +and gleaming, low-bodiced, short-skirted, and a-tiptoe in +her pearly slippers; and again in filmy, trailing petticoats, +and half-covered neck, sitting like a pictured marchioness +of old in front of the dressing-table, in the shine of the candles, +while Mrs. Leverich’s maid piled the fair hair high +on her small head. And every few minutes there was a +knock at the door, and a maid brought in a box of flowers, +great, delicious bunches of red and pink and white roses, +and sweet peas and lilies, and violets tied with yards of +lustrous satin ribbon. Dosia held out her arms for them, +the dear, fragrant, heavenly things, and hung over them, +and buried her face in them, and kissed them, before +she sent them down-stairs, with loving protest that +she should have to be parted from them until she +should follow. She had not so much as dreamed of this +richness of flowers for her! It was because it was her ball, +her ball! And her lover had come. +</p> +<p> +There was a noise of carriages driving up to the house—the +intimate friends who came first. The musicians below +were beginning to tune their instruments, and the twanging +of the strings touched an intenser chord of exhilaration. +The long-ago dance at the bazaar—was Dosia to have +another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? +For this was her ball—her ball, and the dance would be +with Lawson as her lover. Her feet kept time to some fairy +measure of her own. +</p> +<div><a name='i190' id='i190'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i008' id='i008'></a> +<img src="images/i190.jpg" alt="Like a pictured marchioness of old" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Like a pictured marchioness of old</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191'></a>191</span></div> +<p> +Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white +cloud enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in +pale green satin, came into the room and clasped a little +thread of pearls around the slender white throat before +she went down-stairs. +</p> +<p> +Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but +pale and cold; there was a sick look around her mouth. +One or two girls ran in for a peep at the débutante. And +was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent up word +that they were all waiting for her. In a moment—Dosia +would come in a moment. If they would leave her, she +would be down in a moment. The music had struck up +now, and swung into the preparatory strains of Lohengrin. +Dosia would come in a moment. +</p> +<p> +As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone +in her chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. +Her spirit cried out that this instant could never come +again; she wished to feel it, to know it, forever. The mirrors +reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, as she +leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... +Then she opened the door and went down the hall to the +stairs. +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends +on the soul within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. +Never in her life would she look again as she did to-night, +with that lovely, childlike joy of anticipation; deeper +happiness might be hers, but never happiness of the same +kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one +shaded his eyes with his hand. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192'></a>192</span> +</p> +<p> +The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which +led to a broad landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway +of the brilliantly lighted drawing-room across the hall. +In there were grouped Mrs. Leverich, Lois, the rest of the +receiving party, and the Misses Snow, standing near a +table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, their +long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich +was at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside +him was George Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; +at one side in the half-shadow of some palms was another +man. Something in the turn of the shoulders was oddly +familiar to Dosia—he moved suddenly, and for a second she +stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was +Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her +than it was followed by another: Where was Lawson? +</p> +<p> +“Here is our princess descending the stairs,” announced +Mr. Sutton gallantly. +</p> +<p> +At that instant, as Dosia stood on the landing, with one +slippered foot on the lower step, facing her little admiring +world, somebody began to come down the flight at the +side with hurrying, stumbling feet. It was Lawson in evening +dress, his olive cheeks flushed, his eyes reckless. The +men who were watching knew at once that, in common +parlance, he was “not himself.” Dosia, her sweet eyes raised +to meet his, only knew, with a quick, half-frightened thrill, +that he looked strangely unnatural. He seemed to see no +one but her, as he caught up to her, saying jovially: +</p> +<p> +“You can give me that other kiss now.” +</p> +<div><a name='i192' id='i192'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i009' id='i009'></a> +<img src="images/i192.jpg" alt="Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling feet" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling feet</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193'></a>193</span></div> +<p> +Did his hand but touch her white shoulder in that suggestion +of vulgar familiarity that branded her as with a +hot iron in its scorching, blinding shame? She could not +blush, the blood had all gone to her stricken heart and +left her white as a snow wreath. Then Leverich sprang up +the steps and took Lawson by the arm, dragging him +forcibly back into the upper regions, as some of the guests +began to descend. Dosia must go in, helpless, toward those +staring faces. Would no one come to her aid? Justin? He +had turned to speak to Lois. Billy Snow? His face was +averted, his eyes on the ground. Bailey Girard, her helper +once, the hero of her dreams, the man his friend had pledged +for succor—Bailey Girard stood motionless. +</p> +<p> +It was George Sutton who came forward and, placing +her hand in his arm, led her with old-fashioned courtesy +to her place beside Mrs. Leverich. The whole incident had +taken barely a moment. Dosia stood up, pale and graceful, +artificially self-composed, greeting the many people who +began to pour in, smiling above the enormous bouquet of +bride roses that she held, and chatting in a high, thin +voice. Her one immediate thought was that she must stand +up straight, as if nothing had happened—stand up straight +and talk. +</p> +<p> +“Has the girl no feeling?” thought Lois contemptuously. +“Why, she did not even blush!” +</p> +<p> +Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling +of death in the heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! +What did those men think of her, or those women who saw? +What could they think her like, to have given any man +a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson +done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulder—he +had asked her for a kiss. That was all. It was nothing +and it was everything—something that could never be undone. +Through the dancing, through the flirting, through +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194'></a>194</span> +all the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. +What had happened? It was nothing—and it was +everything. Each effort for comfort brought with it that +horrible, blinding shame to surge over her more and more, +as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch. +</p> +<p> +How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly +showed the people, how gay the scene! One partner after +another claimed Dosia. She danced and danced, and did +not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all that +throng there was not one person whom she could call her +friend. She fancied that people were whispering as she +passed them. She had but one prayer—that the evening +might end. She met Justin’s eyes from time to time; they +looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered +expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, +and she was right. Those who are responsible are squeamish +as to the appearance of delicacy in the conduct of a young +girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, yet there +was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such +a thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed +them all in an awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich +briefly, “She had better come back to us at once,” +and Leverich had answered, “Well, perhaps it would be +best.” +</p> +<p> +William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming +into the ball-room at all. He stood, instead, leaning against +a doorway, and watched everyone who approached Dosia; +his brows were lowering, his attitude aggressive. He saw +that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was +not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, +bent solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glass +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195'></a>195</span> +of water, and William saw that she had lapsed momentarily +on a corner divan by his sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful +eyes raised to the elder woman, but he did not hear the +younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice: +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so glad to be here with you!” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you, my dear.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m homesick,” said Dosia, with a white smile. “Oh, +Miss Bertha, I’m so homesick!” Her fancy had leaped +passionately to the security of the untidy cottage in the +South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it were really +the loving home she longed for. +</p> +<p> +“Homesick at a ball!” said Miss Bertha, with a kind +inflection. She patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly +with her thin ungloved hand. “You oughtn’t to +be homesick now, you must enjoy yourself, my dear; you’re +young.” +</p> +<p> +Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosia’s +burning eyes. If she could only have stayed with Miss +Bertha! But she was claimed for the dance. Why must +you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never end? +</p> +<p> +The evening was half over when she found herself in +front of Mr. Girard, with some one hastily introducing +them. He had just come from up-stairs with several men, +all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he +hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively +fancied that he had kept out of her way on purpose, +though she remembered hearing Leverich say that he did +not know how to dance, and so did not care for balls. +Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, +his personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, +as something unaffectedly charming and magnetic. He +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196'></a>196</span> +was tall, straight, and well made, with the square shoulders +she remembered, and the easy, erect carriage of a soldier. +The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his long, thin +face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, +all gave an impression of young vitality and power that +accorded well with her thought of him. His eyes were +light gray, and not very large; Dosia had seen them full +of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to acquire +a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had +thought of him so long and intimately that his presence +near her brought its exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. +She looked up at him. It might help even her to be +near anyone as strong as that, if he were kind—as kind +as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, +unconsciously, as she half extended her hand. +</p> +<p> +Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed +formally as he said: “Pardon me, but I am just on my +way to the train.” +</p> +<p> +He stepped aside, leaving a free passage for the youth +who came pushing by to claim his dance with her, and was +gone almost before she knew it. He <em>could</em> have stayed—he +did not want to talk to her! She was lonely and disgraced, +and the thought of Lawson an agony. +</p> +<p> +She did not see that, as Girard went into the hall, some +one gripped him there and said fiercely, “Come with me!” +Billy Snow, his eyes blazing, had pulled him out on the +piazza beyond. +</p> +<p> +“You’ve got to answer to me for that,” he stuttered. +“You’ve got to answer to me for that, Mr. Girard. Why +did you turn away from Do—from Miss Linden like +that?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197'></a>197</span> +</p> +<p> +“What right have you to ask?” questioned the other +man coolly, but with a sudden frown. +</p> +<p> +“None, except that I—love her,” said Billy, with a +queer, boyish catch in his voice. “Yes, I love her, and she +doesn’t care a snap of her finger for me. But I don’t care; +I love her anyway, and I always shall. I’m proud to!” +The catch came again. “She may step on me, if she wants +to. You saw what happened here to-night when that +damned brute—” He made a gesture toward the hallway. +</p> +<p> +Girard made no answer, but looked into vacancy for a +moment. Before the sight of both of them came a vision +of Dosia in all the radiance of her beautiful innocence, the +flush on her cheek, and the divine, shy look in her eyes +when she first raised them to Lawson, before it changed +to—— +</p> +<p> +“You saw what happened here to-night,” said Billy, +with renewed heat at the other’s silence. “I don’t care +what <em>he</em> said, or what you think; she’s no more to blame +than——” +</p> +<p> +The other stopped him with a quick, peremptory +gesture. +</p> +<p> +“You mistake,” he said shortly. “You’re speaking to +the wrong person. I saw nothing. I don’t know what you +mean, and I don’t want to.” +</p> +<p> +“What!” cried William, staring. +</p> +<p> +“Let me give you a piece of advice,” said Girard incisively, +with an odd whiteness in his face. “Don’t you +know better than to bring the name of a woman into a +discussion like this? If a girl needs no defense—by +Heaven, she needs none! And that’s the end of it. Only a +fool talks.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198'></a>198</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said William, with a sharp breath, after a pause,—“yes; +thank you—I’ll remember. But when I meet +<em>him</em>—” He stopped significantly. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, whatever you please!” said Girard, spreading out +his hands lightly, with a smile and a quick, steely gleam +in his eyes that cut like a scimitar. +</p> +<p> +“Sorry I’ve got to go—my overcoat is just inside. No, +I don’t want to drive, I’d rather walk. Good-by!” +</p> +<p> +He went off in a moment, with long strides, down the +carriage-drive to the station, the dance-music growing +fainter in the distance. She was dancing still. Her face—her +pure, sweet, pleading child’s face—went with him +through the moonlight. He knew that look! When helpless +things were hurt like that—He couldn’t talk to her that +night, nor touch her hand, because of that burning desire +to leap on Lawson Barr and choke the life out of him first. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199'></a>199</span>CHAPTER FOURTEEN</h2> +<p> +The morrow after the ball was drawing to a close +in darkening clouds and an eerie, rushing wind. +It had been one of the gray, cold days of spring, +with a leaden sky and a pervading damp and chill—a long, +long day to some of those in the Leverich house. Rumor +whispered that Lawson had been found upon the highroad +in the early morning, unconscious, with his face and head +cut, and that there were tracks yet on the side piazza +from the feet of those who had carried him in from the +muddy roads. Rumor said that the wounds had not come +from accident. The doctor’s carriage had been there, and +had gone again; but the doctor might have come to see +Miss Linden, who was also said to be prostrated and in +bed, or Mrs. Leverich, who was excused to callers as +having a headache. The great house was silent and +deserted-looking inside, except for the servants engaged +in setting it to rights and carrying the furniture down +from the attic, where it had been stored overnight. +</p> +<p> +Only a few even of the inmates—of whom Dosia was one—knew +that Lawson was in an upper room, with his head +bandaged, sobered and sullen, watching through the wide +windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as he waited +the completion of the arrangements that were to take him +at nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had +put his foot down this time; Lawson was to go. He was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200'></a>200</span> +bringing his vices too near home, concealment was no +longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past rose to make +a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected +Dosia’s. +</p> +<p> +“It’s no use,” Leverich had said to his wife, in a +stormy interview that morning, “I won’t have the fellow +here another day. I’ll ship him off to Nevada, and not +another penny will I give him while he lives. He can sink +or swim, for all me; and he <em>will</em> sink—down to hell.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, don’t say that you won’t send the poor boy any +money,” pleaded his wife. +</p> +<p> +“Not a red. I’ve had enough of him, Myra. <em>You</em> know! +As long as he could appear half-way decent, I was willing +to carry my end, but he’s going to the dogs now too fast +for me. I’ve done with him; he goes to-night, whether he’s +able to or not.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. +Mrs. Leverich, impelled by what sometimes seems to be +the very demon of hospitality, still pressed her to stay +longer, while knowing that her absence would be a relief. +</p> +<p> +“It is too bad that you want to go like this,” she had +said crossly, sitting in gorgeous negligée by the side of +Dosia’s bed, her handsome, richly colored face showing +mean lines in it. “I looked upon you quite as a daughter; +I thought we would have such nice times together. Why +on earth couldn’t you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? +Then none of this would have happened.” Her tone was +complaining, as of one compelled to suffer unnecessarily; +there was such a total absence of warmth as to prove that +shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated +unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her an +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201'></a>201</span> +injured feeling; if there had been a glamour around Dosia +the glamour had departed. What little depth the nature of +Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of blood, which +made her resent any imputation on Lawson. +</p> +<p> +“I suppose you’d like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have +your meals in your room,” she went on in a businesslike +way. “I’ll send Martha up to pack your trunk for you—that +is, if you insist on going—if she’s not too busy. The +servants have so much to do to-day.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I can pack it myself,” said Dosia. What did one +stab the more matter now? She took Mrs. Leverich’s hand +impulsively. “You’ve been so good, so kind to me—you’ve +given me so many pretty things,”—her voice sank to a +whisper,—“it doesn’t seem to me that I ought to keep +them now. I want to give them back to you.” +</p> +<p> +“What is it you say?” asked Mrs. Leverich impatiently. +“You speak so low, I can hardly hear you. Oh, +these!” She turned to a little pile of jewel-cases on the +table. “Why, I gave them to you to keep. Well, if you +feel that way about it—These pearls, perhaps, but the pins +were quite inexpensive; do keep them, really, there’s no +reason why you shouldn’t, you know.” +</p> +<p> +“I’d rather not,” said Dosia; and her hostess gathered +the things when she went out. +</p> +<p> +It was a long day—a long, long day. From the bed +where Dosia lay, she saw the gray clouds shifting, shifting +endlessly above through the opening made by the +parted window-curtains. What had happened? Nothing—and +everything; nothing—and everything! +</p> +<p> +Gossip reigned in the village, carrying Dosia and +Lawson up and down its gamut, even reaching the high +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202'></a>202</span> +crescendo of a secret marriage, with the inevitably hinted +smirching reasons therefor. The Leverich ball promised to +supply subject-matter for many a day to come. Mrs. Snow, +from as early as eleven o’clock in the morning, sat with a +white worsted shawl wrapped around her—the sign of +elegant leisure—and rocked in the green-bowered and +steaming little sitting-room between the geraniums and +the begonias while awaiting visitors. She greeted each one +who “ran in” with the invariable remark: +</p> +<p> +“I suppose you know all about the Leverichs’ ball last +night. Well, what do you think of the goings-on there?” +being intent mousingly on getting every last little cheesy +crumb of detail, and peacefully unaware of deep, rich +stores concealed in her own family. The incident of the +stairway was common property, but Miss Bertha had told +nothing of Dosia’s little heart-breaking confidence to her. +Her mother was amazed at the very conservative disapproval +expressed by this elder daughter, turning for +confirmation of her own views to her callers. +</p> +<p> +“I thought, before all this, that the girl was a bold +thing,” she announced in virtuous condemnation. “It’s all +very well for you to try and defend her, Bertha, but +neither you nor Ada would have gone on in that way.—Oh, +yes, Mrs. Willetts, my dear, he kissed her on the stairs—just +as they all say. But that was the least part of it. +They say his <em>manner</em> to her—And he was—yes, exactly. +Oh, a man doesn’t take liberties, in <em>such</em> a way, unless a +girl has allowed a good deal. It’s evident that they’ve—been—pret-ty—intimate. +I’m sorry for the Alexanders, +they’ll have a handful in her. Bertha, will you knock on +the window? The man with the eggs is passing by, and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203'></a>203</span> +we want three. <em>Bertha!</em> you are not paying any attention +to me. She is not herself at all to-day, Mrs. Willetts, she +looks so yellow. Yes, you do, Bertha. Don’t you think she’s +very yellow, Mrs. Willetts?” +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps it is the light,” suggested Mrs. Willetts +evasively. +</p> +<p> +“No, it’s not the light; it’s the late hours,” said Mrs. +Snow. “I did not want her to go to the ball, late hours +knock her up for days. William shows the effect of it, too—his +right hand is all swelled up. He says he doesn’t +know how it got so, but I think it’s from dancing too +much.” +</p> +<p> +“Mother!” expostulated Miss Bertha. +</p> +<p> +“Well, my dear, I don’t see why you speak to me like +that. I’m not in my second childhood yet! I don’t know +why he couldn’t get a swelled hand from dancing; some of +these young girls are so athletic, they grip your fingers +like a vise—I know <em>I</em> find it very unpleasant. Don’t you +remember—no, of course you don’t, but I do—how poor +General Grant’s hand was puffed out to twice its size from +people shaking it? The picture of it was in all the papers +at the time.” +</p> +<p> +“I don’t think William danced much,” said Ada. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Snow pursed her pale lips and shook her small, +neat head. +</p> +<p> +“All I know is that he was quite worn out; he slept so +heavily that he never heard me at all when I rattled at his +door-knob and called to him at three o’clock this morning +that I thought I heard some one on the porch below his +window. It’s very odd—I’ve heard it before. I don’t think +it’s cats, and I’m so afraid of tramps.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204'></a>204</span> +</p> +<p> +The statuesque Ada looked up with a swiftly startled +expression. +</p> +<p> +“There are always tramps around,” said Mrs. Willetts. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know it, and it worries me to have William out +so late alone. William is nothing but a child, though he is +so tall,” said Mrs. Snow. “Of course, last night his sisters +were with him.” She paused before harking back to the +appetizing theme. “They say Miss Linden is still staying +at the Leverichs’. I shouldn’t think she’d stay there an +hour longer than she could help. They say Mrs. Alexander +refused to have her back again at first—did you hear that? +They say——” +</p> +<p> +And in Dosia’s room, where she lay alone, the long, +silent day wore on; the gray clouds shifted, shifted above. +What had happened? Nothing—and everything. +</p> +<p> +If Leverich was to keep his word about Lawson, the +preparations for his departure must be speedy. They also +took money. Leverich could contract for any amount of +expenditure to be paid in the future by large drafts, but +to hand over five hundred on the minute in cash was at +certain times and hours an irritatingly difficult procedure. +He cursed the necessity now, with a fervor born of the +disastrous ball, and the late hours, and the further fact +that stocks had gone down suddenly and he was out on a +deal. The gray clouds meant also, in the city, clouds of +dust, which the raw wind swept smartingly into his eyes +every time he had occasion to go out. As he was getting +ready at last to go home with the purchased tickets, he +looked up and saw Justin coming in. Leverich nodded to +the other’s greeting, but did not otherwise return it. +</p> +<p> +“I won’t ask you to sit down,” he said curtly; “I want +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205'></a>205</span> +to catch the four-o’clock train out. How are you getting +on? All right?” +</p> +<p> +“All wrong.” +</p> +<p> +“What’s the matter?” +</p> +<p> +“This,” said Justin, with a white light in his eyes, and +holding out a letter which the other took half reluctantly, +relapsing mechanically into the chair by his desk, while +Justin dropped straddle-legged into another opposite, his +face looking over the back of it, around which his arms +were clasped. He went on talking, while the other slowly +unfolded the paper and looked at the heading. +</p> +<p> +“You remember those first big consignments we sent +out after the fire? Well, the whole output was rotten!” +</p> +<p> +“Great heavens!” said the other, sitting up straight, +with his eyes stuck to the lines. “Are you sure it’s as this +says?” +</p> +<p> +“Sure? It’s the sixth letter of the kind we’ve had in ten +days; three came in this morning’s mail. The packing-room +is full now of returned machines—what we’ll do with +the rest I don’t know. A couple of firms want the instruments +duplicated; the rest want their money back. We +talked big at first, thought it was a mistake—that’s why +I didn’t speak of it to you—but it’s no mistake; the whole +output’s rotten. The bars are rusted and bent, so that +everything’s out of gear; it would cost more to repair the +machines than to make new ones.” +</p> +<p> +“Were the bars those you got from Cater?” asked +Leverich. +</p> +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich whistled. +</p> +<p> +“It’s no fault of his, those he used were all right.” +</p> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206'></a>206</span></div> +<p> +Bullen says they must have been a fraction off size for us, and +that did the business. Heaven only knows how many more +letters we’ll get! I don’t see how we’re to pay up and get +out of it, as it is.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Leverich, throwing the letter down on the +desk, drumming on it with the ends of his fingers. Then +he shrugged his big shoulders as if shunting the burden +from them as he rose. “Well, I must go. Sorry I can’t +help you out, but Martin’s away now. By the way, when +you can pay up on that interest, we’ll be glad to have it. +We’ve been going pretty easy with you, you know, but +it can’t last forever; we’ve got to have our money, as well +as other people.” He had not meant to say anything of +the kind, but the bad news and the inferred appeal had +accented the irritation of the day. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, certainly,” said Justin, with a swift gleam in his +blue eyes, and a pride that could be large enough to make +contemptuous allowance for a little meanness in the man +from whom he had received benefits. He had counted on +Leverich’s ready help in this trouble, but there was more +between the two men than the money—from the first +moment of meeting this afternoon, Dosia’s name, unspoken, +had correlated in each a little hidden spring of +antagonism. One of Justin’s womenkind had misused Leverich’s +hospitality; both resented the fact and her enforced +departure. How many business situations have been +made or marred by domestic happenings, no history of +finance will ever tell. +</p> +<p> +And still the long day wore on in Dosia’s silent room. +</p> +<p> +The preparations for Lawson’s going were all made +before the nightfall that was to cover his exit. His trunk +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207'></a>207</span> +had gone; his coat and hat and hand-luggage were stacked +conveniently together on a chair in the empty, cleared-out +room. +</p> +<p> +“And this is the last money you’ll ever get from me,” +Leverich said, counting out the bills on the table by which +Lawson sat uneasily, his head and part of his swollen, +discolored face bandaged, his dark eyes glancing furtively +from under their heavy lids. “There are your tickets, +they’ll carry you through. Peters will be at the door with +the carriage at nine to take you to the train here, and +James will go over with you to the terminal and put you +on the sleeper. You can’t get out too fast for me.” +</p> +<p> +“It’s kind of you to kick a fellow when he’s down,” +said Lawson sardonically. +</p> +<p> +“It’s a pretty expensive kick,” returned Leverich +grimly, “but it’s the last. You’ll never get a cent more +from me, nor from Myra either, if I know it.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, very well,” said Lawson indifferently. But when his +sister came in afterwards alone, he cut her words short; +through all her plaintive farewell complainings there was +a manifestly cheerful prevision of relief when he should be +gone. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve had enough of this—don’t come in here again. He +says you’re to send me no money, but you’re to send me all +I want—you hear?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Lawson!” +</p> +<p> +“You know why you’d better.” He fixed his eye on her +threateningly, and the full color blanched suddenly from +her face. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, yes, I will.” She made an effort to recover herself. +“If you realized how used up I am over all this——” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208'></a>208</span> +</p> +<p> +“Don’t come in here again!” His rising voice, the +glance he shot at her, sent her flying from the room—it +was as if some crouching animal were about to leap a +barrier between them. +</p> +<p> +The shifting gray clouds were darkening now into a +solid mass, the eerie wind that had sprung up whined +fitfully around the corners of the house, as he sat there +waiting. After a while the door opened and shut; there was +a soft, rustling noise. Lawson looked up, and saw Dosia +against that background of the darkening sky. She was +in a white silken gown, given her by Mrs. Leverich, that +fell in straight folds from her waist to her feet. She had +been in white the night of the ball. But her face! He put +his hand involuntarily across his eyes. So pinched, so wan, +so small, so piteously changed that face, he did well to +hide the sight of it from him. Only her eyes—those eyes +that were the mirrors of Dosia’s soul—showed that she +still lived; in them was a steadfastness and a purpose won +from death. +</p> +<p> +She came straight toward him, though with a slow and +languid step, dragging a low chair forward to a place by +his. His rough appearance, so different from his usual +carelessly well-cared-for aspect, sent a momentary spasm +over her pinched face, but that was all. She dropped into +the chair as one who found it difficult to stand, saying +after a moment’s silence, in a childlike voice: +</p> +<p> +“Please take your hand down from your eyes; please +don’t mind looking at me.” +</p> +<p> +He dropped the hand heavily on the table, with some +inarticulate protest. +</p> +<p> +“Please don’t mind looking at me. I want to say—I +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209'></a>209</span> +came here to say—it is all wrong to act as if everything +were all your fault, as if you were all to blame. I’ve been +thinking, thinking, thinking, all day long. If I had done +what was right, none of this would have happened. It was +my fault too.” +</p> +<p> +“No!” said Lawson roughly. +</p> +<p> +“Yes.” She stopped, and repeated solemnly: “It was +my fault too. They are sending you away now because—because +you had been making love to me. But I let you”—her +locked fingers twisted and untwisted as she talked—“I +<em>wanted</em> you to, when I knew it was wrong, when I +didn’t really love you. That was why you couldn’t respect +me. If I had been quite high and good, you would not have—none +of this would have happened.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” said Lawson; the old bitter, mocking smile +flickered back to his lips. “Really, don’t you think you’re +setting too much value even on <em>your</em> influence? I assure +you, you can have quite a clear conscience in that regard.” +</p> +<p> +She went on, with no attention to what he had been +saying beyond the fact that her pale cheek seemed to +whiten and her gaze was fixed the more solemnly on his. +</p> +<p> +“I couldn’t be satisfied until I had thought out the +truth. There is nothing that satisfies but the truth.” Her +voice sank to a whisper. “If it cuts your heart in two, +you’ve got to bear it—and be glad—because it’s the truth. +I know now that, after all, I didn’t help you; I <em>hindered</em>. +That’s all the more reason for me to stand by you now. +And I came to say,”—she took his hand and laid her cold +cheek upon it,—“if you go away—take me with you! I +have enough money to go too. If you have to work, I’ll +work; if you are hungry, I’ll be hungry. There is no one +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210'></a>210</span> +to love you but me, and I <em>will</em>. I said I would believe in +you, and I will believe in you—as I promised—always.” +</p> +<p> +“My God!” said Lawson. He tore his hand from her, +and flung his head upon his folded arms on the table, +breaking into great, voiceless sobs that shook him from +head to foot. Half-inarticulate words fell from him: +“Don’t touch me—don’t come near me!” At last he +turned, and, gathering up a fold of her gown, kissed it +again and again. His passion raised a faint stir of the old +thrill that came from she knew not where, except that his +presence inevitably called it forth. +</p> +<p> +“For this once you may believe in me,” he said. “Look +at me!” His gaze, burning with an inner scorn, rested on +hers. “You are the dearest, the loveliest—” His voice +broke once more, he had to wait before he could regain +it. “If I were to let you sink your life with mine, I’d +deserve to be hung. I’ve let you talk as if you could help +me. Well, you can’t, and I’ll tell you why—I’ll clear your +conscience of me forever. Down at the bottom of it all, I +don’t want to be helped. I don’t want to be made better. +I don’t want to live a different life! There are moments +when I’ve deceived myself as well as you, but it was all rot. +It’s not that I’m not fit for you,—no man’s that!—but +I’m made so that I’d rather go to the devil than <em>be</em> fit for +you. The more you cared for me, the more I’d drag you +down. That’s the whole brutal truth. The one saving grace +I own is that I tell it to you now.” +</p> +<p> +“Ah, no, no!” said Dosia, with a cry. “It can’t be +so.” She turned her head from side to side, as one looking +for succor; her composure was failing her, after so many +cruel knife-thrusts in her already bleeding heart—she +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211'></a>211</span> +yearned over him with a compassion and longing too +great to bear. +</p> +<p> +“Dosia,” said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice +sounded far away in her ears. +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” she answered, rising also, she knew not why. +</p> +<p> +“This is good-by.” +</p> +<p> +She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed +to lose the marks of dissipation and bitterness, and become +strangely boyish, strangely sweet, in its expression. +</p> +<p> +“See!” he said, “I could clasp my arms around you, +as I’m longing to, and kiss your darling mouth. You’d +let me, wouldn’t you, blessed one? For all that I’ve done +or all that I’ve been, you’d let me?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” whispered Dosia, trembling. +</p> +<p> +“Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, +that I did not—that I was man enough to keep you free +of me at the last. I’ll never touch you again—no, not so +much as the hem of your gown. And, so help me God, I’ll +never look upon your face again.” +</p> +<p> +“Lawson, Lawson!” +</p> +<p> +“I’ll never see your face again. When you think of me, +believe and pray that I’ll keep my word. I want to have +the thought of you to die with.” +</p> +<p> +“I can’t bear it!” wailed Dosia suddenly. +</p> +<p> +“Good-by.” +</p> +<p> +She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, +and his gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking +at each other; the room faded away from before them in +those moments that were of eternity. The past—the +present—the future crept up now and stood between +them, pushing them farther and farther away from each +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212'></a>212</span> +other, farther and farther, till even parting had become +a fact long ago lived through and grown dim. They were +neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, and +beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting. +</p> +<p> +Through the high window the darkening sky had become +suddenly luminous where it touched the horizon. +</p> +<p> +Slowly she moved away from him—slowly, slowly. One +last lingering, solemn look, and the door had closed. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213'></a>213</span>CHAPTER FIFTEEN</h2> +<p> +“Lois, would you mind very much if we didn’t move +into the new house, after all?” +</p> +<p> +“Not move into the new house! What do you +mean? I thought it would be finished next week.” +</p> +<p> +“It means that I shall not be able to increase my living +expenses this year,” said Justin. +</p> +<p> +Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade +of the purple wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, +a month after Dosia’s return. At the side of the steps +a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the place fragrant; the air +was full of a sort of glitter that touched the leaves whenever +they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made +the grass brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the +voices of the children sounded peacefully over their early +supper. +</p> +<p> +The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, +with no foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was +out walking with George Sutton, and the people who might +“drop in,” as they often did on Sundays, had other engagements +to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, had +been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while +waiting for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, +but now that he was here she put down her book with a +show of reluctance as she said: +</p> +<p> +“Why didn’t you tell me before? I gave the order for +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214'></a>214</span> +the window-shades yesterday when I was in town—that was +what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon. You +have to leave your order at least two weeks beforehand at +this season of the year.” +</p> +<p> +“You can countermand it, can’t you?” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose I’ll have to—if we’re not to move into the +house,” said Lois in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome +tears coming, as usual, to her eyes. She felt inexpressibly +hurt, disappointed, fooled. “I thought you said +you were having so many orders lately. Does the money +<em>all</em> have to ‘go back into the business,’” she quoted sardonically, +“as usual? I think there might be some left for +your own family sometimes. I’m tired of always going +without for the business.” It was a complaint she had +made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment +she felt as if she were saying it for the first time. +</p> +<p> +“We have orders, I’m glad to say, but we’ve had one +big setback lately,” he answered. +</p> +<p> +He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her +side—the very effort for success was meat and drink to +him, he cared not what else he went without, so the business +grew; but she <em>might</em> have had a little more out of it as +they went along, instead of waiting for the grand climax +of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife +sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I +haven’t talked about it,” he continued, with an unusual appeal +in his voice. The blasting fact of those returned machines +had been all he could cope with; he had been tongue-tied +when it came to speaking about it—the whirl and +counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215'></a>215</span> +diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he +had begun to see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep +craving for the unreasoning sympathy of love. +</p> +<p> +“I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in +hopes that I shouldn’t have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders +is going to put up a couple of houses for next year that +you’ll like much better, he says.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, it will be just the same next year; there’ll always +be something,” said Lois indifferently, getting up to go +into the house. “I hate the whole thing!” +</p> +<p> +He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He +could have counted on quickest sympathy from her once; +he knew in his heart that he could call it out even now if he +chose, but he did not choose. If his own wife could be like +that, she might be. +</p> +<p> +“Papa dear, I love you so much!” +</p> +<p> +He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled +and blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in +her little white shoes, her arms reached up to tighten instantly +around his neck as he bent over. +</p> +<p> +“Zaidee, my little Zaidee,” he said, and, lifting her on +his knee, strained her tightly to him with a rush of such +passionate affection that it almost unmanned him for the +moment. She lay against his heart perfectly still. After +a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, and he +kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure—his +little darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy +of his child, he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, +beautiful as it was, could ever satisfy, any more than it +could satisfy the heart-hunger of his wife. +</p> +<p> +She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216'></a>216</span> +usual, and the house looked as if it had a mistress in it once +more, though the atmosphere of a home was lacking. She +was languid, irritable, and unsmiling, accepting Justin’s +occasional caresses as if they made little difference to her, +though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, passionate +remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; +it contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there +were still occasionally evenings when he came home to find +her windows darkened and everything in the household +upset and forlorn; when every footfall must be adjusted +to her ear—that ear that had strained and ached for his +coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager +half-hour in which he sat by her, and in which her personality +hardly reached him until he kissed her, on leaving, +with a quick, remorseful affection at being so glad to go. +</p> +<p> +The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse +than, he had feared, but he was working retrieval with +splendid effort, calling all his personal magnetism into play +where it was possible. He had borrowed a large sum from +Lewiston’s,—a young private banking firm, glad at the +moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of +months,—holding on to the dissatisfied customers and creating +new demand for the machine, so that the sales forged +ahead of Cater’s, with whom there was still a good-natured +we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed at times +as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich’s dictum regarding +Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be +pursued with minor, outlying competitors: “You’ll have +to force that fellow out of business or get him to come into +the combine.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217'></a>217</span> +the price demanded for the continuance of a backing; +there was just a little of the high-handed quality in his +manner which says, “No more nonsense, if you please.” +That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs +that were ready, if he showed symptoms of “falling down,” +to shake him ratlike by the neck and cast him out. +</p> +<p> +“Papa dear, papa dear! There’s a man coming up the +walk, my papa dear.” +</p> +<p> +“Why, so there is,” said Justin, rising and setting the +child down gently as he went forward with outstretched +hand, while Lois simultaneously appeared once more on the +piazza. “Why, how are you, Larue? I’m mighty glad to +see you back again. When did you get home?” +</p> +<p> +“The steamer got in day before yesterday,” said the +newcomer, shaking hands heartily with host and hostess. +He was a man with a dark, pointed beard and mustache, +deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice that +seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered +over Lois. “How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? +Which chair shall I push out of the sun for you—this +one?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, thank you,” responded Lois, sinking into it, with +her billows of lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against +the background of green vines. “Aren’t you going to sit +down yourself?” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you, I’ve only a minute,” said the visitor, leaning +against one of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his +hand. “I’m out at my place at Collingswood for the summer, +and the trains don’t connect very well on Sunday. I had +to run down here to see some people, but I thought I +wouldn’t pass you by.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218'></a>218</span> +</p> +<p> +“Did you have a pleasant trip?” asked Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Very pleasant,” rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. +“Oh, by the way, Alexander, I heard that you were +inquiring for me at the office last week. Anything I can +do for you?” +</p> +<p> +“Have you any money lying around just now that you +don’t know what to do with?” asked Justin significantly. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Larue’s dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded +change which the mention of money brings into social relations. +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps,” he admitted. +</p> +<p> +“May I come around to-morrow at three o’clock and +talk to you?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, do,” said the other, preparing to move on. “Please +don’t get up, Mrs. Alexander; you don’t look as well as +I’d like to see you.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’m all right,” said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“You must try and get strong this summer,” said Mr. +Larue, his eyes dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating +thoughtfulness before he turned away and went, Justin +accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee dancing on behind. +Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue turned +once more and lifted his hat to her. +</p> +<p> +A faint, lovely color had come into Lois’ cheek, brought +there by the powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene +Larue’s presence; she felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, +by a man with whom she had hardly talked alone +for a couple of hours altogether in their whole five years’ +acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her +on the slightest occasion, as he had to-day; he knew when +she entered a room or left it, and she knew that he knew. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219'></a>219</span> +</p> +<p> +It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies +which exist between certain men and women, without +the conscious volition of either. He knew as soon as his +eyes fell on her whether she were glad or sorry, lonely or +confident, and his glance or the tone of his voice was a response +to her mood; he saw instinctively when she was too +warm or too cold, or needed a rest. Her husband, who loved +her, had no such intuitions; he had to be told clumsily, and +even then might not understand. Yet she had not loved +him the less because she must beat down such little barriers +herself; perhaps she had loved him the more for it—he was +the man to whom she belonged heart and soul—but the +barriers were a fact. She had an absolute conviction that +she could do nothing that Eugene Larue would misunderstand, +any more than she misunderstood her involuntary +attraction for him. Above all things, he reverenced her as +his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He would +have given all he possessed to have the kind of love which +Justin took as a matter of course. +</p> +<p> +Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, +for more than half of which time his wife, whom Lois had +never seen, had lived abroad for the further study of music, +an art to which she was passionately devoted. If there had +been any effort to bring a hint of scandal into the semi-separation, +it had been instantly frowned away; there was +nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden, +under the undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and +in the constant publicity of large musical entertainments +and gatherings. She sometimes played the accompaniments +of great singers. Her husband went over every spring, presumably +to be with her, living alone for the greater part +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220'></a>220</span> +of the year at his large place at Collingswood. Neither was +ever known to speak of the other without the greatest respect, +and questions as to when either had been “heard +from” were usual and in order; it was always tacitly taken +for granted that Mrs. Larue’s expatriation was but temporary. +</p> +<p> +But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was +a man who had suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, +from having all the tenderness of his nature thrown +back upon itself, without reference to that sting of the +known comment of other men: “It must be pretty tough +to have your wife go back on you like that.” In some mysterious +way his wife had not needed the richness of the +affection that he lavished on her. If her heart had been +warmed by it a little when she married him, it had soon +cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had proudly +let her go. +</p> +<p> +Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he +mounted the porch steps, but he only looked at her absently +as he said: +</p> +<p> +“There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia’s hurrying +down the road. I think I’d better take the chairs in +now.” +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221'></a>221</span>CHAPTER SIXTEEN</h2> +<p> +Dosia had come back from the Leverichs’ to a +household in which her presence no longer made +any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. +She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, +and spent her evenings usually in her own room, developing +a hungry capacity for sleep, of which she could not seem +to have enough—sleep, where all one’s sensibilities were +dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She had, however, +rather more of the society of the children than before, +owing to their mother’s preoccupation. Nothing could have +been more of a drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love +in the Leverich domicile, where she had been the +center of attraction and interest. Everything seemed terribly +unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of all—as +if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting +for the next thing to happen. +</p> +<p> +Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, +but was held back by her repugnance to Lawson, which +inevitably made itself felt. She couldn’t understand how +Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get into an +equivocal position with such a man—“really not a gentleman,” +as she complained to Justin, and he had answered +with the vague remark that you could never tell about a +girl; even in its vagueness the reply was condemning. +</p> +<p> +The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222'></a>222</span> +with curiously questioning eyes as they talked about casual +matters. Mrs. Leverich bowed incidentally as she passed +in her carriage, where another visitor was ensconced, a +blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was absorbed. +</p> +<p> +Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, +desultory counting on the sympathy that had helped her +before, but she had been unfortunate in the times for her +visits; on the first occasion Mrs. Snow, with majestic demeanor +and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the second +the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in +weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting +out the innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man +hired semiannually, for the day, to put out the plants or to +take them in. Callers are a very serious thing when you have +a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every +minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow +remarked, “People ought to know when to come and when +not to.” Dosia got no farther than the porch, and though +Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her a sprig +of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, +she was not asked to sit down. +</p> +<p> +Your trouble wasn’t anybody else’s trouble, no matter +how kind people were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, +who had always been her devoted cavalier, patently avoided +her, turning red in the face and giving her a curt, shamefaced +bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. +It would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could +have hurt her very much. But Dosia was in the half-numb +condition which may result from some great blow or the fall +from a great height, save for those moments when she was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223'></a>223</span> +anguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest dagger-thrusts, +at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, +as when one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful +dead which one must, for all time, be terribly powerless to +alleviate. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. +He sent her great bunches of roses that seemed somehow +alive and comfortingly akin when she buried her face in +them. He had come to see her every week, though twice she +had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was +changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest +and solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other +claims Mr. Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an +occasion of profit for himself which he might well be pardoned +for seizing. He required little entertaining when he +called, developing an unsuspected faculty for narrative +conversation. +</p> +<p> +Foolish and inane in amatory “attentions” to young +ladies, George was no fool. He had a fund of knowledge +gained from the observation of current facts, and could talk +about the newsboys’ clubs, or the condition of the docks, +or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical +reasons why motives for reform didn’t reform; and the talk +was usually semi-interesting, and sometimes more—he had +the personal intimacy with his topics which gives them life. +Dosia began to find him, if not exciting, at least not tiring; +restful, indeed. She began genuinely to like him; he took +her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always +thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments +when his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration +or a warmer feeling, but was, instead, somewhat gratefully +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224'></a>224</span> +touched by it. Not only her starved vanity but her +starved self-respect cried out for food, and he alone gave +it to her. +</p> +<p> +This Sunday afternoon Dosia—modish and natty in her +short walking-skirt and little jacket of shepherd’s check, +and a clumpy, black-velveted, pink-rosed straw hat—walked +companionably beside the square-set figure of George up +the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had preferred +to walk instead of driving. There was a strong +breeze, although the sun was warm; and the summerish +wayside trees and grasses had inspired him with the recollection +of a country boy’s calendar—a pleasing, homely +monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his +theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or +to hold her little checked umbrella so that the sun should +not shine in her eyes, or to offer her his hand with old-fashioned +gallantry if there was any hint of an obstacle to surmount. +The way was long, yet not too long. They stopped, +however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while +leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side +of the slope below the carriage drive, looking down into the +green meadows below; beyond, afar off, there was the white +mist-hazed glimpse of a river with toy houses crowded +thickly into the middle distance. +</p> +<p> +As they stood there, looking into the distance for +some minutes, Dosia with thoughts far, far from the +scene, George Sutton’s voice suddenly broke the +silence: +</p> +<p> +“I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the +first time that anybody had spoken his name since he left. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225'></a>225</span> +She had prayed for him every night—how she had prayed! +as for one gone forever from any other reach than that of +the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in it—fear +of any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting +tone of the person who told it, which she would be powerless +to resent; fear of awakening in herself the echo of +that struggle of the past. +</p> +<p> +“He’s at the mines, isn’t he?” she questioned, in that +tone which she had always striven to make coolly natural +when she spoke of him. +</p> +<p> +“Yes; but I don’t believe he’s working there yet. He +seems to be mostly engaged in playing at the dance-hall +for the miners. Sounds like him, doesn’t it?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance. +</p> +<p> +“I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there,” pursued +Mr. Sutton. “It’s the worst kind of a life for him. +He’s an awfully clever fellow; he could do anything, if he +wanted to. I don’t know any man I admire more, in certain +ways, than I do Barr.” +</p> +<p> +Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson’s clever brilliancy, +his social ease and versatility and musical talent, +were all what he himself had longed unspeakably to possess. +Besides, there was a deeper bond. “I’ve known him ever +since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he came to this +place,” he continued. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, did you?” cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With +a flash, some words of Mrs. Leverich’s returned to her—“Mr. +Sutton brought Lawson home last night.” So that +was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she went on: +“It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226'></a>226</span> +Barr. Everybody here seems to look down on—to despise +him.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick,” said George, with +an unexpected crude energy; his good-natured face took +on a sneering, contemptuous expression. “Men talking +about him who themselves——” He looked down sidewise +at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more respectable +than he,—respectability might be said to be his +cult,—yet he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a +world of men wherein “ladies” were a thing apart. No man +was ever kept from any sort of confidence by the fact of +George Sutton’s presence. His feeling for Barr and toleration +of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that +George himself had also been brought up in one of those +small, dull country towns in which all too many of the +cleanly, white, God-fearing houses have no home in them +for a boy and his friends. +</p> +<p> +“If Lawson had had money, everybody would have +thought he was all right,” he asserted shortly. “Perhaps +we’d better be going home; it looks as if there was a +shower coming up. Money makes a lot of difference in this +world, Miss Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose it does; I’ve never had it,” said Dosia simply. +</p> +<p> +“Maybe you’ll have it some day,” returned Mr. Sutton +significantly. His pale eyes glowed down at her as they +walked back along the road together, but the fact was not +unpleasant to her; Lawson’s name had created a new bond +between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm throb +of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; +<em>he</em> prized her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not +ashamed to show it. He went on now with genuine emotion: +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227'></a>227</span> +“I know one thing; if—if I had a wife, she’d never have +to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +“She ought to care a good deal for you, then,” suggested +Dosia, picking her way daintily along the steeply sloping +path, her little black ties finding a foothold between the +stones, with Mr. Sutton’s hand ever on the watch to interpose +supportingly at her elbow. +</p> +<p> +“No, I wouldn’t ask that; I’d only ask her to let me +care for <em>her</em>. I think most men expect too much from their +wives,” said George. “I don’t think they’ve got the right +to ask it. And I don’t think a man has any right to marry +until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that’s my +idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, +did me the honor of accepting my hand,”—Mr. Sutton’s +voice faltered with honest emotion,—“I’d spend my +life trying to make her happy, I would indeed, Miss Dosia. +I’d take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my means +would afford; she should have anything I could get for +her.” +</p> +<p> +“I think you are the very kindest man I have ever +known,” said Dosia, with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, +though with a far-off, outside sort of feeling that +the whole thing was happening in a book. Her vivid imagination +was alluringly at work. In many novels which she +had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one +noticed at first, and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth +and stupid, when confronted with his fascinating rival, yet +who turned out to be permanently true and unselfish and +omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his uninspiring +exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love—in short, +“John,” the honest, patient, constant “John” of fiction. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228'></a>228</span> +His affection for the maiden might be of so high a nature +that he would not even claim her as a wife after marriage +until she had learned truly to love him, which of course +she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really “John”—Dosia +half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the +gentleman. +</p> +<p> +The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a +rippling smile overspread her face. +</p> +<p> +“Here’s the very lady for you now,” she remarked +flippantly, as Ada Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into +view at the crossing against a dark cloud in the background, +on her way to a friend’s house from service at the +little mission chapel on the hill. Ada’s cheeks took on a +not unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath +Mr. Sutton’s glance,—a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,—before +she went down the side-road. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sutton’s face reddened also. “Now, Miss Dosia! +Miss Ada may be very charming, but I wouldn’t marry +Miss Ada if she were the only girl left in the world. I give +you my word I wouldn’t. <em>You</em> ought to know——” +</p> +<p> +“We’ll have to hurry, or we’ll be caught in the rain,” +interrupted Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made +further conversation an affair of ineffective jerks, though +she dreaded to get back to the house and be left alone to +the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and Lois were +gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached +the piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing +storm. Lois greeted Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; +perhaps she also dreaded the accustomed dead level. +</p> +<p> +“Do come in, you’ll be caught in the rain if you go on. +Can’t you stay to a Sunday night’s tea with us?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229'></a>229</span> +</p> +<p> +“Oh, do,” urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor +of his gaze. Lois’ hospitality, never her strong point, +had been much in abeyance lately; to have a fourth at the +table would be a blessed relief. She felt a new tie with Mr. +Sutton—they both sympathized with Lawson, believed in +him! +</p> +<p> +She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft +little round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at +Mrs. Leverich’s, which somehow made her pale little face +and fair, curling hair look like a cameo. When she came +down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of the small +spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red +lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort +as she cuddled within Dosia’s half-bare round white arm, +while Mr. Sutton, drawing his chair up very close, leaned +over Dosia with eyes for nobody else, his round face getting +brick-red at times with suppressed emotion, though he tried +to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory conversation. +Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin alternately +played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in +the intervals of discourse. +</p> +<p> +Through the long open windows they watched the sky, +which seemed to darken or grow light as fitfully, in the +progress of the oncoming storm; the wind lifted the vines +on the piazza and flapped them down again; the trees bent +in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and +white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently +from where Dosia sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the +other side of the street—a tall, straight, well-set-up figure +with the easy, erect carriage of a soldier. He stopped suddenly +when he was opposite the house, looked over at it, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230'></a>230</span> +and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to +stop the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he +crossed over with a quick, decided step. +</p> +<p> +“Why, here’s Girard!” cried Justin, rising with alacrity. +His voice came back from the hall. “Awfully glad you took +us on your way. Leverich told you where I lived? You’ll +have to stay now until the storm is over. Lois, this is Mr. +Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia——” +</p> +<p> +“I have already met Mr. Girard,” said Dosia, turning +very white, but speaking in a clear voice. This time it +was she who did not see the half-extended hand, which immediately +dropped to his side, though he bowed with politely +murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half across +the room, he seated himself by Justin. +</p> +<p> +A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she +had ever felt before, had surged over Dosia at the sight +of him, as his eyes, with a sort of quick, veiled questioning +in them, had for an instant met hers—resentment as for +some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and lips grew +scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head +high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched—though +he turned from her a moment to say: +</p> +<p> +“Weren’t you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, +Girard?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes; I thought you didn’t see me,” said the other +lightly, himself turning to respond to a question of Justin’s, +which left the other group out of the conversation, an exclusion +of which George availed himself with ardor. +</p> +<div><a name='i230' id='i230'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i010' id='i010'></a> +<img src="images/i230.jpg" alt="Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231'></a>231</span></div> +<p> +There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have +lived through large experiences which is hard to describe. +As Girard sat there talking to Justin in courteous ease, +his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin leaning on the +fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no +one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging +personality, seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, +by the side of Girard. +</p> +<p> +Lois, who had been going backward and forward from +the dining-room,—with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, +following after her astride a stick, until the nurse +was called to take him away,—came and sat down quite +naturally beside this new visitor as if he had been an old +friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As a matter +of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at +sight, he much preferred the society of those who were married, +when he went in women’s society at all. Girls gave +him a strange inner feeling of shyness, of deficiency—perhaps +partly caused by the conscious disadvantages of a +youth other than that to which he had been born, but +it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to +be credited, and which he certainly need have been the +last to possess. Like many very attractive people, he had +no satisfying sense of attractiveness himself. +</p> +<p> +It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild +preparation, with a hint of sunshine through the rain that +sent a pale-green light over the little drawing-room, with +its spindle-legged furniture and the water-colors on its +walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond was +relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the +round mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, +white-belled lilies-of-the-valley in the center. +</p> +<p> +The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room +took on an odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232'></a>232</span> +subdued. In this commonplace little gathering on a +Sunday afternoon the material seemed to be only a veil +for the things of the spirit—subtle cross-communications +of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions tinglingly felt. +Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one +knew not what. To Dosia’s swift observation, Girard had +lost some of the brightness that had shone upon her vision +the night of the ball; he looked as if he had been under some +harassing strain. Her first impression that he had come into +the house reluctantly was reinforced now by an equal impression +that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then, had +he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, +the hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the +shrine of her memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this +stranger. Had he known? He must have known, just as +she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the most! +She could not hear what he said though the room was +small; he and Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It +was evident that he frankly admired Lois, who was smiling +at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became curiously aware +that from his position directly across the room he was covertly +watching her as she sat consentingly listening to +George Sutton, whose round face was bending over very +near, his thick coat sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles +of hers as it rested on the carved arm of the little sofa. +</p> +<p> +She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head +with its big blue bow lying against her breast, as the child +played with the simple rings on the soft fingers of the hand +she held. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia’s bidding, to alter the shade, +and she moved a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233'></a>233</span> +Girard the next instant moved slightly also, so that her face +was still within his range of vision, the intent gray eyes +shaded by his hand. It was not her imagining—she felt +the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those two +men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most +obviously so. George came back from his errand only to +sit a little closer to Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused +state. He was, indeed, in that stage of infatuation which +can no longer brook any concealment, and for which other +men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even +while she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish +manifestation of something inherently great, and a tribute +to her power. To Dosia’s indifference, in this strange dual +sense of another and resented excitement,—an excitement +like that produced on the brain by some intolerably high +altitude,—Mr. Sutton’s attentions seemed to breathe only +of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very +kind. She could ask him to do anything for her, and he +would do it, no matter what it was, just because she asked +him. He was planning now a day on somebody’s yacht, with +Lois, of course; and “What do you say, Miss Dosia—can’t +we make it a family party, and take the children +too?” he asked, with eager divination of what would please +this lovely thing. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, oh, why can’t you take <em>us</em>?” cried Zaidee, trembling +with delight. +</p> +<p> +The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; +the whole place was growing dark. There was a sudden +silence, in which Dosia’s voice was heard saying: +</p> +<p> +“I’ll get my photograph now, if you want it.” She rose +and left the room,—she could not have stayed in it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234'></a>234</span> +a moment longer,—and Zaidee ran over to her father, her white +frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain against Dosia +rosy warm. +</p> +<p> +“You had better light the lamp, Justin,” said Lois, and +then, “Oh, you’re not going?” as Girard stood up. +</p> +<p> +He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. “I’m +afraid I’ll have to.” +</p> +<p> +“I expected you to stay to tea; I’ve had a place set for +you.” +</p> +<p> +“I’d like to very much—it’s kind of you to ask me—but +I’m afraid not to-night. I’ll see you to-morrow, Sutton, +I suppose. Good evening, Mrs. Alexander.” His hand-touch +seemed to give an intimacy to the words. +</p> +<p> +“Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere,” said +Justin, investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who +had followed the two, stood in the doorway. +</p> +<p> +“I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by?” asked +Girard tentatively. +</p> +<p> +“Will you, Zaidee?” asked her father, in his turn. +</p> +<p> +For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. +Girard dropped on one knee, a very gallant figure of a +gentleman, as he put both arms around the small, light +form of the child and held her tightly to him for one brief +instant while his lips pressed that warm cheek. When he +strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in farewell, +it was with an odd, somber effect of having said +good-by to a great deal. +</p> +<p> +For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had +been the recipient of an emotion called forth by some one +else. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235'></a>235</span>CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</h2> +<p> +“Lois?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> +<p> +Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat +sewing, a canary overhead singing with shrill velocity in a +stream of sunshine. Her look gave no invitation to Dosia. +She did not want to talk; she was busy, as ever, with—no +matter what she was doing—the self-fullness of her +thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been +longing to move into the other house, where, amid new +surroundings, she could escape from the familiar walls +and outlook that each brought its suggestion of pain, with +the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how she wanted +to be happy. +</p> +<p> +Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said: +</p> +<p> +“I’ve something to tell you, Lois.” +</p> +<p> +“Well?” +</p> +<p> +“I’m engaged to George Sutton.” +</p> +<p> +“Dosia!” +</p> +<p> +Lois’ work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl. +</p> +<p> +“I’m sure I don’t see that you need be surprised,” said +Dosia. She looked pale and expressionless, as one who did +not expect either sympathy or interest. +</p> +<p> +“No, I suppose not,” said Lois. “Of course, I know +he has been paying you a great deal of attention, but +then, he has paid other girls almost as much.” She +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236'></a>236</span> +stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a sense, she had +rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve +many difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia—if +Dosia could——! Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To +marry a man without loving him would have been to her, +at any time or under any stress, a physical impossibility. +Marriage for friendship or suitability or support was +outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with +cold disapproval: +</p> +<p> +“Dosia, you don’t know what you are doing. You don’t +love George Sutton.” +</p> +<p> +Dosia’s face took on the well-known obstinate expression. +</p> +<p> +“He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I +am. If he is satisfied, I don’t see why anyone else need +object! He likes me just as I am, whether I care for him +or not.” +</p> +<p> +She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on +with that unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is +sometimes maddeningly subject, when all feeling as well +as reason seems in abeyance, though her voice was +tremulous. “And I <em>do</em> care for him. I like him better than +anyone I know; we are sympathetic on a great many +points. No one—<em>no one</em> has been so kind to me as he! He +doesn’t want anything but to make me happy.” +</p> +<p> +Lois made a gesture of despair. “Oh, <em>kind</em>! As if a man +like George Sutton, who has done nothing but have his +own way for forty years, is going to give up wanting it +now! Marriage is very different from what girls imagine, +Dosia.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose so,” said Dosia indifferently. She rose and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237'></a>237</span> +came over to Lois. “Would you like to see my ring?” She +turned the circle around on her finger, displaying a +diamond like a search-light. “He gave it to me last +night.” +</p> +<p> +“It is very handsome,” said Lois. “I suppose you will +have to be thinking of clothes soon,” she added, with a +glimmer of the natural feminine interest in all that pertains +to a wedding, since further protest seemed futile. “I +will write to Aunt Theodosia.” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you,” said Dosia dutifully. +</p> +<p> +A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost +unimaginably beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse +grapes and peaches, and strawberries as large as +the peaches, and the contents of a box of flowers filled +every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as +Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge—the +former winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly +agile, his bare knees nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, +jumping on her back whenever she stooped over, to +be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered +herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! +Nothing could be sweeter than these. +</p> +<p> +In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, +she put on her hat with the roses and went to make a +call, long deferred and hitherto impossible of accomplishment, +on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a bride of a few months, +who, as Alice Torrington, had been one of the girls of her +outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, +but she felt that Alice Wayne’s state of mind would +be more sympathetic, even if unconsciously so, than Lois’. +</p> +<p> +As she walked along now, she thought of George with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238'></a>238</span> +a deeply grateful affection. How good he was to her! He +had been unexpectedly nice when he had asked her to +marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him an +unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan +on the words: +</p> +<p> +“I have never known anyone with such a beautiful +nature as yours, Miss Dosia! I just worship you! I only +want to live to make you happy.” +</p> +<p> +He did not himself care for motoring—being, truth to +tell, afraid of it—but she was to choose a car next week. +She had told him about her father and her mother and +the children. She was to have the latter come up to stay +with her after she was married—do anything for them +that she would. In imagination now she was taking them +through all the shops in town, buying them toy horses and +soldiers and balls, and dressing them in darling little light-blue +sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the time to +come! She thought with a little awe that she hadn’t known +that Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And +the way he had spoken of Lawson—Ah, Lawson! That +name tugged at her heart; this suddenly became one of +those anguished moments when she yearned over him as +over a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only +through her efforts. She must never forget! “Lawson, I +believe in you.” She stopped in the shaded, quiet street +with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the words +aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before +coming back to the eager surface planning of her +own life, with an intermediate throb of a new and deeper +loneliness. The Dosia who had so upliftingly faced truth +had only strength enough left now to evade it. Perhaps +some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had +been jarred confusingly out of touch. +</p> +<div><a name='i238' id='i238'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i011' id='i011'></a> +<img src="images/i238.jpg" alt="Flowers and children, children and flowers" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Flowers and children, children and flowers</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239'></a>239</span></div> +<p> +Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she +had but just returned from town. A moment later Dosia +heard herself called from above: +</p> +<p> +“Dosia Linden! Won’t you come up-stairs? You don’t +mind, do you?” +</p> +<p> +“No, indeed,” answered Dosia, obeying the summons +with alacrity, and pleased that she should be considered +so intimate. This was more than she had expected—an +informal reception and talk! With Dosia’s own responsive +warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted +to see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white +negligée, might be pardoned for wishing to show off this +ornament of her trousseau. +</p> +<p> +“I hope you won’t mind the appearance of this room,” +she announced, after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. +“I went to town so early this morning that I didn’t +have time to really set things to rights, and I don’t like +the new maid to touch them.” +</p> +<p> +“You have so many pretty things,” said Dosia admiringly. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, haven’t I? Take that seat by the window, it’s +cooler. Please don’t look at that dressing-table; Harry +leaves his neckties everywhere, though he has his own +chiffonier in the other room—he’s such a <em>bad</em> boy! He +seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his +things for him.” +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important +matronly responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, +dashing girl, not at all pretty, who was always spoken of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240'></a>240</span> +compensatingly as having a great deal of “style,” but +she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm of +attraction because she was so happy. +</p> +<p> +“Have this fan, won’t you?” She went on talking: +“Harry and I saw you and George Sutton out walking +yesterday. We were in the motor, and had stopped up on +the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He <em>is</em> just the loveliest +thing! What a pity he won’t go where there are girls! +Harry is quite jealous, though I tell him he needn’t be.” +Mrs. Wayne paused with a lovely flush before going on. +“You didn’t see us, though we stopped quite near you. +My dear, it’s <em>very</em> evident that—” She paused once more, +this time with arch significance. “Oh, you needn’t be +afraid, I never know anything until I’m told. But George +is such a good fellow! I’m sure I ought to know—he was +perfectly devoted to me. He’s not the kind girls are apt to +take a fancy to, perhaps,—girls are so foolish and romantic,—but +he’d be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says he’s +a lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much +happier married—the right people, of course.” +</p> +<p> +“Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?” +asked Dosia, as she lay back in her low, wide, prettily +chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had had some half-defined +impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, melted +away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, +instead, one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring +on her finger, underneath her glove, seemed to burn into +her flesh. Her eyes roved warily around the room as Mrs. +Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and her husband, +folding up her Harry’s neckties as she chattered, her +fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241'></a>241</span> +brought out some of her pretty dresses afterwards for +Dosia’s inspection. From the open door of a closet beyond, +a pair of shoes was distinctly visible—Harry’s shoes, +which the wife laughingly put back into place as she went +and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even +those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched +with sentiment for her because the feet of her dearest had +worn them. +</p> +<p> +In Dosia’s world so far it was a matter of course that +some people were married—their household life went unnoticed, +the fact had no relation to her own intangible +dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to these +elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But +Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This +matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her +notice, as if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. +The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of her indifference; +the room choked her. George Button’s neckties, +not to speak of his shoes——! +</p> +<p> +“I’ll have to be going,” she interrupted precipitately, +rising as she spoke. +</p> +<p> +“Why,”—Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a +sentence, looking at her in surprise,—“what’s the matter? +Aren’t you well?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, yes, but I have an appointment,” affirmed Dosia +desperately. “I’ve been enjoying it all so much, but I’d +forgotten I must go—at once! Good-by.” +</p> +<p> +She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, +but it was imperative that she should be alone, +away from all suggestion of the newly married. She hoped +that there would be no visitors, but as she neared the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242'></a>242</span> +house she saw that there was some one on the piazza—George +Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose +above his white waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled +the rose in color as he came to meet her. +</p> +<p> +“Why, I thought you were not coming until this +evening,” said Dosia demandingly,—“not until you could +see Justin.” +</p> +<p> +“Did you think I could stay away as long as that?” +asked George. His manner the night before had been +almost reverential in the depth of his honest emotion; the +kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had seemed of an +impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed +it. She was conscious now of a change. +</p> +<p> +“Where is Lois?” she asked, as they went up the steps +together. +</p> +<p> +“The maid said she had stepped out for a moment.” +</p> +<p> +“Then we’ll sit here on the piazza and wait for +her,” said Dosia, without looking at her lover. Taking +the hat-pins out of her hat, she deposited it on a chair +with a quick decision of movement, and then seated herself +by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking disappointed, +was left perforce to the rocker on the other side. +</p> +<p> +The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a +rambling vine, open toward the street; but around the +corner of the house Japanese screens walled it off from +passers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet with big bowls +of roses. +</p> +<p> +“Come around to the other end of the porch,” said +George appealingly. +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; “I +like it here.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243'></a>243</span> +</p> +<p> +She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread +out her hands, palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, +which had been turned inward, caught the sunshine +gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled. Dosia saw +the smile and reddened. +</p> +<p> +“I wish you wouldn’t sit there looking at me,” she said +in a tone which she tried to make neutral. +</p> +<p> +“Come down to the other end of the piazza—just for +a moment.” +</p> +<p> +“No!” said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement +and changed her tone sharply: “Oh, there’s a spider on +the table there, crawling toward me! Please take it +away.” Her voice rose uncontrollably. “I hate spiders— +oh, I <em>hate</em> spiders! I’m afraid of them. Make it go away! +please! There—now you’ve got it; throw it off the piazza, +quick! Don’t bring it near me!” +</p> +<p> +“The little spider won’t hurt you,” said George enjoyingly. +</p> +<p> +Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely +out of her deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly +raised to his, her red lips quivering, was distractingly +lovely; fear gave to her quick, uncalculated movements +the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of his solid +good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the +innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between +his thumb and forefinger, a little nearer to her—a little +nearer yet. There is a type of bucolic mind to which the +causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is an exquisitely +funny joke. +</p> +<p> +“Don’t,” said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready +to fly from the chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244'></a>244</span> +George’s fatuously smiling face behind it. The next instant +she had fled wildly down to the screened corner of +the veranda, with George after her, only to be stopped +by the screens at the end. His following arms closed +tightly around her as he kissed her in happy triumph. +</p> +<p> +After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia +stood perfectly still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession +that came into play at such times. She seemed +to yield entirely now to the rightful caresses of an accepted +lover as she said in a perfectly even and casual tone +of voice: +</p> +<p> +“Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my +handkerchief from up-stairs. I’ll be right back again.” +</p> +<p> +“Don’t be gone long,” said George fondly, releasing +her half-unconsciously at the accent of custom. +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him +coquettishly as she went off with unhurried step—to dart +up two pairs of stairs like a flying, hunted thing, and into +her room, to lock the door fast and bolt it as if from the +thoughts that pursued her. +</p> +<p> +Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled +the door-knob ineffectually before she knocked. +</p> +<p> +“Dosia, what’s the matter? To whom are you talking? +Let me in! Katy said, when she came up, you would not +answer—she said Mr. Sutton had been walking up and +down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in; let me +in this minute!” +</p> +<p> +The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and +the door flew open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her +hair in wild disorder, was standing in the center of the +room, fiercely rubbing her already scarlet cheeks with a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245'></a>245</span> +rough towel. Every trace of assumed listlessness had +vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant +eyes, and talking half-disconnectedly. +</p> +<p> +“Never let him come here again—never, never!” she +appealed to Lois. +</p> +<div><a name='i246' id='i246'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i012' id='i012'></a> +<img src="images/i246.jpg" alt="“Never let him come here again—never, never!”" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>“Never let him come here again—never, never!</em>”</span> +</div> +<p> +“Whom do you mean?” +</p> +<p> +“George Sutton!” +</p> +<p> +A contraction passed over her face; she began rubbing +again with renewed fury. +</p> +<p> +“Don’t do that, Dosia! You’ll take the skin off. Stop +it!” +</p> +<p> +Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to +push the towel away from her. “Dosia, sit down by me +here on the bed—how you’re trembling! What on earth +is the matter? Dosia, you must not, you’ll take the skin +off your face.” +</p> +<p> +“I want to take it off,” whispered Dosia intensely. “I +hate him, I hate him! I never want to see him again. I +can’t see him again! I threw the ring out in the hall +somewhere. You’ll have to find it—— I couldn’t have it +in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can’t see +him again; promise me that I’ll never see him again—promise, +<em>promise</em>!” She clung to Lois as if her life depended +on that protection. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, yes, dear, I promise,” said Lois with a sudden +warmth of sympathy such as she had never before felt +for the girl. This situation, this feeling, she could comprehend—it +might have been her own in similar case. She +had known girls before who had been engaged for but a +day or a week, and then revolted; it was not so new a +circumstance as the world fancies. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246'></a>246</span> +</p> +<p> +She drew the towel now from Dosia’s relaxed fingers, +and held her closer as she said: +</p> +<p> +“There, be quiet, Dosia, and don’t make yourself ill. +I don’t see what that poor man is going to do—of course +he’ll feel dreadfully; but you can’t help that now—it’s a +great deal better than finding out the mistake later. I’ll +tell him not to come again, I promise you. Of course, I’ll +have to speak to Justin; I don’t know what he will say!” +Lois broke into a rueful smile. “Dosia, Dosia! What +scrape will you get into next?” +</p> +<p> +“Isn’t it dreadful!” gasped poor Dosia. She sat up +straight and looked at Lois with tragic eyes. +</p> +<p> +“Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over +that in this world. I can never be nice again—no one can +ever think I’m nice again! No one can ever—<em>love</em> me in +this world!” She buried her hot face in Lois’ bosom, sobbing +tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the +other’s incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently +a woman made to be loved that the loss of the +dream of it was like the loss of existence. After a moment +Dosia went on brokenly: +</p> +<p> +“It seems so strange—things begin—and you think +they are going to turn out to be something you want very +much, and then all of a sudden they end—and there is +nothing more. Everything is all beginning—and then it +ends—there is nothing more. And now I can never be +really nice again!” +</p> +<p> +“Nonsense! You’ll feel very differently about it all +after a while,” said Lois sensibly. +</p> +<p> +“I don’t want to go down-stairs again.” Dosia began +to shake violently. “If he were to come back——” +</p> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247'></a>247</span></div> +<p> +“Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your +dinner,” said Lois humoringly. “I must go down now; I +hear Justin. Only, you’ll have to promise me to be quiet, +Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment I’m +out of the room.” +</p> +<p> +“No, I’ll be good,” murmured Dosia submissively. +“Oh, Lois, you’re so kind to me! I love you so much!” +</p> +<p> +Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet +now. She could not eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to +the door by the maid, brought in to her. It seemed, oddly +enough, like a reversion back to that first night of her +arrival—oh, so long ago!—after tempest and disaster. +Yet then the white, enhancing light of the future had +shone down through everything, and now there was no +future, only a murky past, and she a poor girl who had +dropped so far out of the way of happiness that she +could never get back to it, never be nice again. That +hand that had once held hers so firmly, so steadily, that +she could sleep secure with just the comfort of its remembered +touch—the thought of it had become only pain, +like everything else. Oh, back of all this shaming hurt with +Lawson and George Sutton was another shame, that went +deeper and deeper still. Since that visit of Bailey Girard’s, +she had known that he had thought of her as she had +thought of him, with a knowledge that could not be controverted. +It is astonishing that we, who feel ourselves +to be so dependent on speech as a means of communication, +have our intensest, our most revealing moments without +it. He had thought of her as she had of him, and, with +the thought of her in his heart, had been content easily +that it should be no more. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248'></a>248</span> +</p> +<p> +Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her +dreams,—lover, protector, dearest friend,—to have sought +her mightily with the privilege and the prerogative +of a man, so that she might have had no experience to +live through but that white experience with him! +</p> +<p> +“Dosia! Open the door quickly.” +</p> +<p> +It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note +in it. She stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she +turned on as she held out a telegram—for the second time +the transmitter of bad news from the South. The message +read: “Your father is ill. Come at once.” +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249'></a>249</span>CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</h2> +<p> +There are times and seasons which seem to be +full of happenings, followed by long stretches +that have only the character of transition from +the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and +months fly by us; we do not realize that they are here +before they are gone, there is so little to mark any day +from its fellow. Yet we lay too much stress on the power +of separate and peculiar events to shape the current of +our lives, and do not take into account that drama which +never ceases to be acted, which knows no pause nor interim, +and which takes place within ourselves. +</p> +<p> +It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North +again, after extending months, in no day of which had +her stay seemed anything but temporary—a condition to +be ended next week or the week after at farthest. Her +father’s illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking +every last ounce of strength from his wife and his +daughter; and after his death the little stepmother had +collapsed for a while, with only Dosia to take the helm. +Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, looking after +the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness +and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, +trying to earn money for the immediate needs by teaching +the scales to some of the temporary tribe at the hotel—an +existence in which self was submerged in loving care for +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250'></a>250</span> +those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was always +to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and +too much of a luxury to have any of its precious moments +wasted in wakeful dreaming; besides, there was nothing +to dream about any more. But when she crept into her +low bed she turned away from the moonlight, because there +are times, when one is young, when moonlight is very hard +to bear. +</p> +<p> +The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come +to the end of its resources, when Mrs. Linden’s brother in +San Francisco offered her and her children a home with +him—an offer which, naturally, did not include Dosia. +She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she +had worked so hard for them, they were not to belong to +her for her very own. The aunt whose generosity had +given her the money for her musical education had also +died, leaving a small sum in trust for the girl; it was +that which furnished her with means when she went once +more to stay at the Alexanders’. Justin himself had written +to see if she could come. +</p> +<p> +There was another baby now, a couple of months old, +and Lois needed her. No fairy-story maiden this, going +out to seek her fortune, who took an uneventful train +journey this time—only a very tired girl, worn with work +and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to lean +her head against the back of the car-seat and feel the +burden of anxiety and care slip from her for a little while. +</p> +<p> +Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for +those whom we love may have its uplifting trend. Dosia +was pale and thin, the blue veins on her temples showed +more plainly, her face was no longer the typical white +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251'></a>251</span> +page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and +inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, +she had tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and +evil; she had known suffering, she had faced shame and +disappointment and—truth; yes, through everything she +had faced that—taken herself to account, probed, condemned, +renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she +had gained in character. She had an innocent nobility of +expression that came from a light within, as of one ready +to answer unwaveringly wherever she might be called. Yet +something in her soft eyes at times trembled into being, +indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet—the soul of that +Dosia who was made to be loved. +</p> +<p> +If she had changed since that first journeying a year +and a half ago, so had the conditions changed in the household +to which she went. Justin had had the not unusual +experience of the business man who has achieved what he +has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the +silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously +drops through. The Typometer Company was +doing a very large business, quadrupled since the day of +its inception. The building was hardly big enough now +to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had +been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage +had been hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the +output of two small rival companies, one out West and +one in a neighboring town—both glad, in view of a losing +game, to make terms with the successful arbiter. Where +one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in +request by fifty people now, for many things—for many +more, indeed, than had been thought of at first; every +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252'></a>252</span> +week plans in special adjustments were made to fit the +machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not +only a success in itself, but was destined to fit into more +and more of the needs of the working world as a standard +product. +</p> +<p> +Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as +he hurried over to his office or held important consultations +with the men who wanted to see him, was awarded +the respect given to the head of a large and successful +concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of +all this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, +the net profits had always fallen short of the mark set for +them; the company was in constant and growing need of +money. +</p> +<p> +Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increased—prices +of copper and steel, of machinery, of +wages, in addition to the larger number of hands employed, +and the rent of the additional floor. It was always necessary +for one’s peace of mind to go back to the value of +the material stock and the assets to be counted on in the +future. The steady branching out of the business in every +direction was proof of the fact that if it did not it must +retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, fewer opportunities—financial +suicide. +</p> +<p> +It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade +that one must be seen to be doing business; only so could +the doors of credit be opened. If Cater came in with him +now, as seemed at last to be expected, the doors must +open farther. No matter how one tries to see all around +the consequences of any change, any undertaking, there +always arise minor consequences which from their very +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253'></a>253</span> +nature must be unforeseen, and yet which may turn out to +be the really powerful factors in the main issue; unimportant +genii that, let out of their bottles, swell immeasurably. +The consequences of the fire, small as it was, +seemed never-ending. The defective bars had proved a +disastrous supply for the machine, in more ways than one. +</p> +<p> +Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his +own retrieval, he had borrowed the ten thousand from +Lewiston, and had used part of the money to pay the interest +to the others; and later, in the flush of reinstatement, +he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, +a loan to be called by him at any time. Lewiston’s +loan had seemed easy of repayment at six months, Justin +knew when the money was coming in, but he had been +obliged, after all, to anticipate, and get his bills discounted +before they came due for other purposes, often +paying huge tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed +the note for sixty days, and then for sixty more, +but with the proviso that this was the last extension. +</p> +<p> +In short, the whole process of competently keeping +afloat had been gone through, with a definite aim of accomplishment; +Cater’s cooperation, about which he had +been so slow, would infuse new blood into the business. It +was maddening at times to have so many good uses for +money and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. +Justin had approached Eugene Larue on that past +Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative +where once he had seemed friendlily suggesting. +</p> +<p> +Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power +of the man behind it, which must not only comprehend +and direct the larger issues, but must be able to carry +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254'></a>254</span> +along smoothly all the easily entangling threads of detail; +he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have +the untiring nervous energy that can “hold out” through +any crisis. Such men may go to pieces after incredible +effort, but they are on the way to success first. Danger +only quickens the sure leap to safety. +</p> +<p> +Justin, preëminently clear-headed, had been conscious +lately of two phases—one an almost preternatural illumination +of intellect, and the other a sort of brain-inertia, +more soul- and body-fatiguing than any pain. +There were seasons when he was obliged to think when +he could instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, +competent, but underneath this demeanor there went an +unceasing effort of computation and reckoning to which +the computation and reckoning on the first night of his +agreement with Leverich was as a child’s play with toy +bricks is to the building of an edifice of stone. +</p> +<p> +The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely +with the daily need of money at home for petty uses; +a condition of affairs which often happens at the birth +of a child, when the household is at loose ends, and the expenses +are necessarily greater in every direction at the time +when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed +never to have enough “change” in his pockets, no matter +how much he brought home. +</p> +<p> +In some men the business faculties become more and more +self-sufficing when there is no other passion to divide them—the +nature grows all one way; and there are others who +seem independent, yet who are always as dependent as +children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of affection, the +love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255'></a>255</span> +all men—that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions +the cause of the beloved against the world. No help-giving +virtue had gone out from this household in the +last year; it had all been a dead lift. +</p> +<p> +Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that +Sunday when she had said that she hated them. When she +had asked for money, she had always added the proviso, +“if he could afford it,” and accepted the fact either way +without comment. He was, as time went on, more and more +affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, +as she keenly felt, less personally loving. +</p> +<p> +If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity +to go out; and if she stayed up, he remained at +home and went to sleep on the lounge; and the little touch +that binds divergence with the inner thread of sympathy +was lacking. +</p> +<p> +Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered +far the most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; +the fire of love of which she was by right high priestess still +burned secretly for her tending as she cowered over the +embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold and chill for +lack of that vital warmth. +</p> +<p> +There were moments when she felt that she could die +gladly for him, but always for that glory of self-triumphing +in the end. Then that which seemed as if it could never +change began to change. +</p> +<p> +Before the child was born, and now since that, there was +a difference. Men and women who suffer most from imaginary +wrongs may become sane and heroic in times of real +danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave, thoughtful for Zaidee +and Hedge and Justin even while she trembled, excited +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256'></a>256</span> +reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband. +</p> +<p> +Then, afterwards, he was proud of his second son. When +Justin came in at the end of each day and sat down by his +wife’s bedside, holding her blue-veined hand while she smiled +peacefully at him, there was a sweet, sufficing pleasure +about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though the +interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact +that one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth +of the child had been to her, as it is to almost every woman, +a separate and distinct calamitous illness to which she +looked forward as one might look forward to being taken +with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a manifestation +of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that +of a child, to be soothed by reason. +</p> +<p> +Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging +fear. One cause for disquieting thought was removed. Now +the helplessness of this little family, for whom he was the +provider, tugged at a swelling heart. +</p> +<p> +As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than +was his wont, he diverged from his usual custom—instead +of entering his own doorway, he went across the street to +Cater’s after a moment’s hesitation. Now that Cater’s cooperation +was at the consummating point, it was wiser not +to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich and Martin +were keenly for its success, Justin’s credit would rise immeasurably +with it. The Typometer Company had absorbed +the minor machines with so little trouble that the unabsorbability +of the timoscript had seemed an unnecessary stumbling +block. Time and time again Justin had sought Cater +with tabulated figures and unanswerable arguments. The +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257'></a>257</span> +combination, he firmly believed, would be highly beneficial +for both—the field was, in its way, too narrow to be divided +with the highest profit; together they could command the +trade. +</p> +<p> +Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,—a +word against which he was principled, with obstinate refusal +to differentiate as to kind, quality, or intent. Like +many men who are given to a far-seeing philosophy in +speech, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to +action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring +to be continually reassured about conditions which +seemed the very a-b-c of commerce. The rivalry between +the two firms had been apparently good-natured, yet a +little of the sharp edge of competition had shown signs of +cutting through the bond. +</p> +<p> +The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript +had cut under; then the typometer had gone as low +as was wise, and the timoscript had begun to weaken in its +defenses. +</p> +<p> +Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, +but rose to shake hands. There was a look of melancholy +in his eyes, in spite of his smile of greeting. +</p> +<p> +“Anything wrong with you?” asked Justin, instinctively +noticing the look rather than the smile. +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, +and leaned back, the light from the high unshaded window +striking full on his lean yellow countenance. “No, there’s +nothing wrong. Got some things off my mind, things that +have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon I +don’t feel quite easy without ’em.” +</p> +<p> +“I think you’re very lucky,” said Justin. The light +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258'></a>258</span> +from the high window fell on his face, too—on his brown +hair, turning a little gray at the temples, on the set lines +of his face, in which his eyes, keen and blue, looked intently +at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot that was crossed +over his knee was excellently shod. +</p> +<p> +Cater shifted a little in his seat. “Well, I don’t know. +My experience is some different from the usual run, I +reckon; I never had any big streak of luck that it didn’t +get back at me afterwards. There was my marriage—I +know it ain’t the thing to talk about your marriage, but +you do sometimes. My wife’s a fine woman,—yes, sir, I was +mighty lucky to get her,—but I didn’t know how to live up +to her family. It’s been that-a-way all my life. Sure’s I get +to ringin’ the bells, the floorin’ caves in under me.” +</p> +<p> +“We’ll see that the flooring holds, now that you’re coming +in with us,” said Justin good-naturedly. “I’ve got +some propositions to put up to you to-day.” +</p> +<p> +Cater shook his head. “There’s no use of your putting +up any propositions. I’ve been drawin’ on my well of +thought so hard lately that I reckon you could hear the +pumps workin’ plumb across the street. I’ve been +cipherin’ down to the fact that I can’t go it alone, any +more’n you,—there we agree; hold on, now!—but I can’t +combine.” +</p> +<p> +“You can’t!” cried Justin, with unusual violence. +“Why not?” +</p> +<p> +“Well, you know my feelin’s about trusts, and—I like +you, Mr. Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I +balk at your backin’. I don’t believe in it. It’ll fail when +you count on it most, it’ll cramp on you merciless if you +come short of its expectations. Leverich isn’t so bad, but +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259'></a>259</span> +Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can’t stand Martin +havin’ a finger in any concern <em>I</em> have a hold of.” +</p> +<p> +“He’s clever enough to make what he touches pay,” said +Justin. +</p> +<p> +Cater’s eyebrows contracted. “You say he’s clever because +he’s tricky—because he’s sharp. He isn’t clever +enough to make money honestly, he isn’t big enough. You +and me, we’re honest, or try to be, but we haven’t the brain +to give every man his just due, and get ahead, too. It’s +the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to +play it! You and me, we can’t do it; we ain’t got the brain +and we ain’t got the nerve; <em>I</em> haven’t. You’ve just ever-lastingly +got to do the best for yourself if you’ve got a +family; the best <em>as</em> you see it.” +</p> +<p> +“What’s all this leading up to? What change have you +been making, Cater?” asked Justin, with stern abruptness. +</p> +<p> +“I’ve given the agency of the machine to Hardanger.” +</p> +<p> +“Hardanger!” Justin’s face flushed momentarily, then +became set and expressionless. To stand out on abstract +questions of honor, and then tacitly break all faith by +going in with Hardanger! +</p> +<p> +“I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring +on this change,” continued Cater. “I’ve been getting the +steel fittin’s on contract from Benschoten again, as I did +at first; it’ll come cheaper in the end. Gives us a pretty +big stock to start off with. I was sorry—I was sorry to +have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? +I’ve got to cut down on the manufacturing as close as I +can now.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose so.” +</p> +<p> +“I wanted to tell you the first one,” said Cater. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260'></a>260</span> +</p> +<p> +“Well, I congratulate you,” said Justin formally, +rising. +</p> +<p> +“This isn’t going to make any difference in the friendship +between me and you, Mr. Alexander? I’ve thought a +powerful lot of your friendship. If I’d ’a’ seen any way to +have come in with you, I’d ’a’ done it. But business ain’t +going to interfere between two such good friends as we +are!” +</p> +<p> +“Why, no,” said Justin, with the conventional answer to +an appeal which still pitifully claims for truth that which +it has made false. The handshake that followed was one in +which all their friendship seemed to dissolve and change +its character, hardening into ice. +</p> +<p> +<em>Hardanger!</em> +</p> +<p> +Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors +in the trade of two hemispheres. To say that a thing +was taken up by Hardanger & Co. meant its success—they +took nothing that was not likely to succeed; they <em>made</em> it +succeed—for them. Their agents in all parts of the known +world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard +to be reached by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was +unassailed; they kept scrupulously to the terms agreed +upon. The only bar to putting an article into their hands +was the fact that their terms—except in the case of certain +standard articles which they were obliged to have—embraced +nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins +coming to the original owners. Everything had to be +figured down, and still further and further down, by those +owners, to make that margin possible. It was cut-throat all +the way through—a policy that made for the rottenness +of trade. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261'></a>261</span> +</p> +<p> +Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations +as to Hardanger, with the conclusion that there +was far more money outside, even if one must go a little +more slowly. It was better to go a little more slowly, for +the sake of getting so much more out of it in the end. +Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything +else failed. Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same +way; that was the understanding between them. But now? +Backed by this powerful agency, the timoscript assumed +disquieting proportions. In the distance, a time not so very +far distant either, Justin could see himself squeezed to the +wall, the output of his factory bought up by Hardanger +for the price of old iron—forced into it, whether he would +or no. Why had he been so short-sighted? Why hadn’t he +made terms himself sooner? But Cater had been a fool to +give in to those terms when, by combining, they could have +swung trade between them to their own measure. Then +Hardanger might have been obliged to seek <em>them</em>, to take +their price!—Hardanger, who could afford to laugh at +his pretensions now! +</p> +<p> +He thought of Cater without malice—with, instead, a +shrewd, kind philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of +pity mixed with his wonder. So that was the way a man was +caught stumbling between the meshes, blinded, dulled, unconsciously +maimed of honor, while still feeling himself +erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written agreement +between them that either should consult the other +before seeking Hardanger; but some promises should be +all the stronger for not being written. +</p> +<p> +This thing <em>couldn’t</em> happen; in some way, he must get +his foot inside the door, so that it couldn’t shut on him. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262'></a>262</span> +There was that note of Lewiston’s, due in thirty days—no, +twenty-five now. What about that? +</p> +<p> +Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after +drayful of boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the +foreman, came into the office with some estimates, pointing +out the figures with a small strip of steel tubing held absently +in his fingers. +</p> +<p> +While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign +birth obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than +sturdily independent—the air and the eye of the skilled +mechanic. On his own ground he was master, and Justin, +with a smile, deferred to him. But Justin broke into Bullen’s +calculations abruptly, after a while, to ask: +</p> +<p> +“What’s that you’ve got there? It looks like one of those +bars that nearly smashed us.” +</p> +<p> +“You’ve got a good eye, sir,” said Bullen approvingly. +“A year and a half ago you’d not have seen any difference +between one bit of steel and another. But there’s one thing +I didn’t see about it myself until Venly—he’s a new man +we’ve taken on—pointed it out to me. He came across a case +of these to-day we’d thrown out in the waste-heap. We +thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because +they were a fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly +he spotted them in a minute, when he was out there, and he +asked me if they weren’t from the Benschoten factory—he +was turned off from there last week, they’re cutting down +the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked +like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the +magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, ’twas +right he was! He says they’ve got piles of them they’ve +been workin’ off on the trade at a cut price. Venly he said +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263'></a>263</span> +he didn’t have any stomach for a skin game like +that.” +</p> +<p> +“That’s a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn’t it?” +asked Justin. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, they’re going to sell out in July, so they don’t +care. I pity anyone that’s counting on any sort of machine +that’s got these in ’em. Would you take the glass and +look for yourself, sir? Every one of ’em is flawed!” +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264'></a>264</span>CHAPTER NINETEEN</h2> +<p> +“Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a—” +Leverich’s words were not fit for print. He had +been away for a couple of days, and now sat tilted +back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not +meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth +snarling—a wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously +insolent, dwelt on Justin, who, fine and keen and +smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute anger never had +any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, chill +self-possession. +</p> +<p> +“You’re sure the agreement’s made?” +</p> +<p> +“Cater’s been sending new consignments as fast as they +could go for the past three days; he’s loaded up with +machines.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich swore again. “D——d fools, not to have made +terms with Hardanger first! If we’d only known! If there +was only some way to put a spoke in the wheel, even yet!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’ve got the spoke, easily enough,” said Justin indifferently, +“the only trouble is, I can’t use it.” +</p> +<p> +“Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn’t you say that before?” +Leverich came down on the front legs of his chair +with a force that sent it rolling ahead on its casters. “What +are you sitting here for? What do you mean by telling +me that you can’t use it?” +</p> +<p> +“Just what I say. But it’s not worth talking about.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265'></a>265</span> +</p> +<p> +“See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in +now instead of his?” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose I might.” +</p> +<p> +“And you’re not going to do it?” +</p> +<p> +“I can’t, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to +me in such a way that I can’t touch it.” +</p> +<p> +“‘The information—’ It’s something damaging to do +with the machine?” +</p> +<p> +Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without +answering. +</p> +<p> +“You have proof?” +</p> +<p> +“What’s the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, +I tell you, I can’t use it. This isn’t any funny business, +you can see that. Don’t you suppose, if I could use it, that +I would? But there are some things a man can’t do—at +any rate, <em>I</em> can’t. And that settles it.” +</p> +<p> +Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently +enough in the last few days, since the combination had been +unwillingly given into his hands, but always with the foregone +conclusion. The devil—granting that there is one,—doesn’t, +as a rule, actively try to tempt us to evil—he +simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our +reason. But this time he had no field for action. To use +secret information against Cater, that could never have +been had but for Cater’s kindness to him in helping him +to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every +time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for +argument to suggest that this very deed of kindness +had worked his disaster—the fact remained the same. +He might do other things, he might do worse things—this +thing he could not do, not though the refusal worked his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266'></a>266</span> +own ruin, not though Cater’s ruin with Hardanger was +insured anyway, but too late for the typometer to profit +by it. Even if the typometer could by some means keep +afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple of +years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a +foreign country. +</p> +<p> +Justin had no excess of sentiment, no quixotic impulse +urged him to go and tell Cater what he had learned. It +was Cater’s business to look after his end of the game, +if the price of material or labor was too cheap, he must +know that there was something wrong with it. The stream +of Justin’s mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp +practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible +to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed +in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression +which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, +not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled +with. +</p> +<p> +“How about your obligations? Do you call this fair +dealing to us, Alexander? There’s Lewiston’s note—once +this deal was settled we would have paid that, as you know. +But it’s out of the question as things stand. We’ll have +to get our money out the best way we can. If this is your +sense of honor—to sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, +let’s talk this out. When it comes to talking +of ruin, no man can afford to stand on terms. We didn’t +put you into the typometer business on any kindergarten +principles—it isn’t to form your character. What we did, +we did for profit; and if the profit isn’t there, we get +out. We’ve no objection to doing a kindness for anyone, +if we can do it and make a profit, but it stands to reason +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267'></a>267</span> +that we’re not in the business for philanthropy any more +than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we were willing +to give you a place in the game if you could run it +to suit us, but we don’t consider any scheme that doesn’t +make money—what doesn’t make money has to go. Profit, +profit, profit—that’s what every sane man puts first, and +there’s no justice in losing a chance to make it. What you +lose, another man takes—if you make another man’s wife +and children better off, you stint your own. You’ve got to +consider a question on all sides. No woman respects a man +who can’t make money; it’s his everlasting business to +make money, and she knows it. Your wife won’t think much +of your fine scruples if she’s to go without for ’em—and, +by the Lord, she’s right! When you go into business, you’ve +got to make up your mind to one of two things: you’ve +either got to step hard on the necks of those below you, +or you’ve got to lie down and let them wipe their feet on +you.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. +Since none was offered, he went on, with the large and +easy manner of one who feels the justice of his convictions: +“No man ever accused me of being close. I’m free-handed, +if I say it that shouldn’t. I like to give, and I <em>do</em> give. If +there’s money wanted for charity, the committees know very +well where to come. And my wife likes to give, too; her +name’s on the books of twenty charitable organizations. +But we give out of money I’ve made by <em>not</em> being free-handed—by +getting every last cent that belonged to me. +You see, I don’t leave my wife out of my calculations—any +man’s a fool that does. She’s got the right to have as +good as I can give her. I wouldn’t talk like this to most +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268'></a>268</span> +men, Alexander, but between you and me it’s different. It +pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when you’ve +got to go home after a hard day’s work; you take a dissatisfied +woman, and she’ll make your home a hell. I know +men—Great Scott! I don’t know how they live!” He +paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his +head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side +of him. +</p> +<p> +“When I say I’ve made the money,” continued Leverich, +“I mean that I actually <em>have</em> made most of it—made it +out of nothing! like the first chapter of Genesis. If a man +has money to start with, he can add to it as easily as you +can roll up a snowball—it’s no credit to him. But I’ve had +only my brains. I’ve seen money where other men couldn’t, +and nothing has stood in my way of getting to it; that’s +the whole secret of success. And my attitude’s fair—you +couldn’t find a fairer. When one of your clerks falls sick, +you pay him his full salary for three or four months till +he’s around again. <em>I</em> know! Well, I don’t do any such +stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list +once for three months, and nobody paid me. After the first +month I was bounced, and I didn’t expect anything else. +I didn’t expect any philanthropical business, and I don’t +give it. That’s fair, isn’t it? I don’t give quarter, and I +don’t expect any. If I’m squeezed, I pay. I don’t stand +still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can +do and what I can’t do. I don’t snivel about what you call +moral obligations; I only recognize money obligations. +Why, see here, Alexander,” he broke off, “if you use the +influence you spoke of, you don’t have to tell me what it +is—you don’t have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269'></a>269</span> +himself needn’t know that you had anything to do +with it.” +</p> +<p> +“But I’d know,” said Justin quietly. +</p> +<p> +Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded. +</p> +<p> +“Very well, then, it comes down to this: If you fail +us now, out of any of your fool scruples toward that poor +devil across the street,—who’s bound to get the blood sucked +out of him anyway,—you ruin your own prospects, and +you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. +By——, if you see any honor in that, I don’t.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Leverich,” said Justin, raising his head swiftly, +with a steely gleam in his eyes that matched the other’s, +“when I try to cheat you or Lewiston or any man out +of what has been put up on me, I’ll give you leave to say +what you please. At present I’ll say good morning.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as +he bent over his desk. Justin picked up his hat and went +out, brushing, as he did so, against a dark, pleasant-faced +man who had been sitting in the next room. Something in +his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge that +the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown +louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he +recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell Brothers. +Each turned to look back at the other, and both men +bowed; the action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted +by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment +Justin was in the street. +</p> +<p> +The clash of steel always roused the blood in him; +he felt actively stronger for combat. He was competently +apportioning toward Lewiston’s note the different sums +coming in this month. There were large bills to be paid +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270'></a>270</span> +to the typometer’s credit by several firms, one of them +Coneways’. Coneways represented the largest counted-in +asset for the entire year—it was the backbone of the +establishment. If it went to Lewiston, what would be +left for the business? That could come next, Lewiston +was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny +of their principal after these intervening six months of +the year were over. Well, let them! Lewiston’s note was +what he had to think of now. +</p> +<p> +All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious +to the sense of the beholder, are started with confidence +in their ultimate success; it is the one trite, universal +reason for starting—that faith is the capital that +all possess in common. Some of these doubtful ventures, +while never really succeeding, do not fail at once; they +are always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually +sinking lower all the time. Others seem to exist by +the continuance of that first faith alone—a sheer optimism +that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to seize hold +of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this +flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on +the high tide. For all the long drag, the anxiety, the +physical strain, the harassment, failure in itself seemed as +inherently impossible to Justin as that he should be +stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think +harder to find a way of accomplishment, that was all. +</p> +<p> +His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverich’s, +but it lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned +down the street that led to the factory, unaltered, since +his first coming to it, save for the transformation of the +neglected house he had noticed then, with its grewsome +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271'></a>271</span> +interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted +shop long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. +There was not a corner, not a building, along that too +familiar way, that was not hung with some thought of +care; there were moments of such strong repulsion that +he felt as if he couldn’t turn down that street again—moments +lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched +yawning mouth of a doorway occasioned a +physical nausea—a foolish, womanish state which irritated +him. +</p> +<p> +The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment +of orders and bills, and letters on minor points, and +questions as to the typometer. The mail was rather apt +to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large trade. Two +letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium +on the use of the machine. In spite of an enormous and +long-outstanding bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous +for payment—one of those bills looked upon as +trifles until they suddenly become staggering—there was, +after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the destiny of +a large part of the world, where the typometer was a +power. +</p> +<p> +A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in +his employ, came in to get help in collecting his insurance; +she was timid before Justin, deeply grateful for his kind +and effective assistance. Two men called at different times, +for advice and introductions to important people. A friend +brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. +There was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to +do with the payment of one’s bills. +</p> +<p> +Justin took both the friend and the customer out to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272'></a>272</span> +lunch, his pleasant sense of hospitality only dimmed by +the disagreeable fact of its taking every cent of the five +dollars he had expected to last him for the week. He was +“strapped.” The luncheon took longer, also, than he had +counted on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed +to lead up only to sordid and anxious details and a sense of +non-accomplishment, induced also by small requisitions +from different people presupposing cash from a cash-drawer +that was empty. +</p> +<p> +It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harker’s assistance, +on the large sums coming in at the end of the +month from Coneways. There were a hundred ways for +them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, +after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would +be satisfied with a partial payment and extend the rest of +the note. While they were still consulting, word was +brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, +smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and +fashion set at odds at present by a very pale and anxious +face and eager, dilated black eyes. He cut short Justin’s +greeting with the words: +</p> +<p> +“I’ve just come over to speak about that note, Alexander.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, I was just wanting to speak to you about it +myself,” said Justin easily. “Have a cigar?” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you,” said Lewiston mechanically, and as +mechanically holding out his hand for the cigar, evidently +forgetting it the next moment. “The fact is, I don’t want +to seem importunate, but if you could pay off that note +fifteen days before date,—a week from to-day, that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273'></a>273</span> +is,—we’d discount it to satisfy you. I didn’t want to bother +you about it, and I tried outside first, but nobody will +take up the paper just now, except at a ruinous rate. If +you could make it convenient, Alexander——” Young +Lewiston sat with his small, eager face bent forward +over his knees, his lips twitching slightly. “You know +that money wasn’t loaned on strictly business principles, +Alexander, but for friendship; I got father to consent to +it. If you could let us have it now, it would save us a world +of trouble. It’s really not much—only ten thousand.” +</p> +<p> +Justin shook his head, his keen blue eyes fixed on the +other. “I can’t let you have it, Lewiston; I wish I could! +But I’m waiting on payments myself. Can’t you pull out +without it?” +</p> +<p> +Lewiston drew in his breath. “Oh, yes, of course we’ll +have to, but it means—Well, I know you would if you +could, Alexander, I told father so—father in a way holds +me responsible, he was in London when I renewed the note +the last time. There isn’t anything to interfere with the +payment when it’s due?” +</p> +<p> +“On my honor, no,” said Justin. “You shall have it +then without fail.” +</p> +<p> +“For if that should slip up—” continued young Lewiston, +wrapped in somber contemplation of his own affairs +alone; he threw his arms outward with a gesture suddenly +tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then wrung +Justin’s hand silently and departed. +</p> +<p> +“Are you busy, Alexander? They said I could come +in.” +</p> +<p> +“Why, Girard!” +</p> +<p> +Justin wheeled a chair around with an instantly +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274'></a>274</span> +brightened face. “Sit down. I’m mighty glad to see you.” +He looked smilingly at his visitor, whose presence, long-limbed, +straight, clean, and clear-eyed, always elicited a +peculiar admiration from other men. “I heard that you +had a room at the Snows’ now, while Billy is away, but I +haven’t laid eyes on you for a month.” +</p> +<p> +“I’ve been coming in on a later train every morning +and going out again on a very much later one at night. +I’m back in town on the paper for a while.” +</p> +<p> +“Why don’t you settle down to something worth +while?” asked Justin, with the reserved disapproval of +the business man for any mode of life but his own. +</p> +<p> +“Settle down to this kind of thing?” said Girard +thoughtfully. “Well, I did think of it last year, when I +undertook those commissions for you. But what’s the use—yet +awhile, at any rate? You see, I can always make +enough money for what I want and to spare, and there’s +nobody else to care. I like my liberty! The love of trade +doesn’t take hold of me, somehow—and you have to have +such a tremendous amount of capital to keep your place. +By the way, have you sold the island yet?” The island +was a small one up near Nova Scotia, taken once for a +debt. +</p> +<p> +“Not yet.” +</p> +<p> +Girard gave him a quick glance—with the instant penetration +of a man who has known hard times himself, he +detected the signs of it in another; the perception lent a +sort of under-warmth and kindness to his voice as he asked: +“How are things going with you?” +</p> +<p> +“Fine,” said Justin in a conventionally prosperous +tone, with a sudden sight of a bottomless pit yawning +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275'></a>275</span> +below him. “I’ve had a few things on my mind lately—but +they’re all right now. By the way, how do you like +it at the Snows’?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, fairly well.” Girard’s gray eyes twinkled in an irrepressible +smile. “I score high at present. They all approve +of me, and I am told that I am the only man who +has never run into the Boston fern or got tangled in the +Wandering Jew. Miss Bertha and I have long talks together—she’s +great. As for Mrs. Snow—she heard Sutton +speak of her the other night to Ada as ‘the old lady.’ I +assure you that since—” He shook his head, and both men +laughed. +</p> +<p> +“Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again,” +said Justin hospitably, indescribably cheered by some soul-offered +sympathy that lay below the trivial converse. +</p> +<p> +“Thank you,” said Girard, an indefinable stiffening +change coming over him momentarily, to disappear at +once, however, as he went on: “By the way, I mustn’t +forget what I came for before I hurry off.” +</p> +<p> +He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as +he rose. “Do you remember lending that fifty dollars to +my friend Keston last year? He turned up yesterday, and +asked me to see that you got this.” +</p> +<p> +“I’d forgotten all about it,” averred Justin. He had +not realized until he took the bills that he had been keeping +up all day by main strength, with that caved-in sensation +of there being nothing back of it—nothing back +of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the +elixir of life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth +for ten thousand dollars, and needing imperatively at +least as much more, felt that with this paltry fifty dollars +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276'></a>276</span> +it was suddenly possible to draw a free breath, felt a sheer, +uncalculating lightness of spirit that showed how terrible +was the persistent weight under which he was living. The +very feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him +calmly sanguine. +</p> +<p> +He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, +saying lightly to Harker, who had come in for his +signature to some papers: +</p> +<p> +“Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. +Coneways’ isn’t due until the 31st—the very last minute! +But he’s always prompt, thank Heaven—what are you +doing?” +</p> +<p> +“Knocking on wood,” said Harker, with a grim smile. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, knock on wood all you want to,” returned Justin. +</p> +<p> +He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to +buy her some flowers. It was the first time he had thought +of her unconsciously for a week. While he was waiting for +a car to pass before he crossed the street, his eye caught +the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p> GREAT CRASH</p> +<p> CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL</p> +<p> IN BOSTON</p> +</div> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277'></a>277</span>CHAPTER TWENTY</h2> +<p> +“I don’t think Justin looks very well,” said Dosia +that afternoon. She was sitting on the edge of the +bed, with her arms spread out half-protectingly +over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been up +and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, +although she looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not +very strong. +</p> +<p> +The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with +only a round forehead and a small pink nose visible, was +of that satisfactory variety entirely given to sleep; Zaidee +and even Redge, adoring little sister and brother, had +been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely unstirring +was their small burden. Lois, who had passionately +rebelled against the prospect of additional motherhood, +exhibited a not unusual phase of it now in as passionately +adoring this second boy. He seemed peculiarly, +intensely her own, not only a baby, but a spiritual possession +that communicated a new strength to her. Lois was +changed. She had always been beautiful, as a matter of +fact, but there was now something withheld, mysterious, in +her expression, as if she were taking counsel of some half-slumberous +force within, like one listening at a shell for +the murmur of the ocean. +</p> +<p> +Not only Lois, but everything else, seemed changed to +Dosia, at the same time being also flatly, unchangeably +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278'></a>278</span> +natural. She had longed—oh, how she had longed!—to be +back here. Even while loving and working in her so-called +home, she had felt that this was her real home, although +here her cruelest blows had fallen on her; even while +bleeding with the wrench of parting from her own flesh +and blood, she had felt that this was the true home, for +here she had really lived—and it was the home of the +nicer, more delicate instincts. After the crude housekeeping, +the lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing +a grinding struggle with circumstance, it was a blessed +relief to get back to a sphere where minor details were all +in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, with their +three children, kept only one maid now, but even that restriction +did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and +cold water! +</p> +<p> +Yet she had also dreaded this returning,—how she had +dreaded it!—with that old sickening shame which came +over her inevitably as she thought of certain people and +places and days. The mere thought of seeing Mrs. Leverich +or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was +like passing through fire. One braces one’s self to withstand +the pain of scenes of joy or sorrow revisited, to find +that, after all, when the moment comes, there is little of +that dreaded pain—it has been lived through and the +climax passed in that previsioning which imagination made +more intense, more harrowingly real, than the reality. +</p> +<div><a name='i278' id='i278'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i013' id='i013'></a> +<img src="images/i278.jpg" alt="Even Redge had been allowed to hold him" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Even Redge had been allowed to hold him</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279'></a>279</span></div> +<p> +Mrs. Leverich stopped her carriage one day to greet +Dosia, and to ask her, with a tentative semblance of her +old effusion, to come and make her a visit—an effusion +which immediately died down into complete non-interest, +on Dosia’s polite refusal; and the incident was not +especially heart-racking at the time, though afterwards it set +her unaccountably trembling. Mrs. Leverich had in the +carriage with her a small, thin, long-nosed, under-bred-looking +man with a pale-reddish mustache and hair, who, +gossip said, passed most of his time at the Leverichs’—he +was seen out driving alone with Myra nearly every day. +He was “an old friend from home.” It had been gossip at +first, but it was growing to be scandal now, with audible +wonder as to how much Mr. Leverich knew about it. +</p> +<p> +Her avoidance of George Sutton was as nothing to his +desire of avoiding her; he dived with surreptitious haste +down side streets when he saw her coming, or disappeared +within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted him +inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce +to take off his hat and murmur, “Good morning,” +he turned pale and was evidently scared to death. After +this he only appeared in the village street guarded on +either side by a female Snow—usually Ada and her mother, +though occasionally Bertha served as escort instead of the +latter. The elder Snows, in spite of this apparent security, +were in a state of constant nervous tension over Mr. Sutton’s +attention to Ada; he had not “spoken” yet, but +it had begun to be felt severely of late that he ought to +speak. Whenever Ada came into the house, her face was +eagerly scanned by both mother and sister to see from +its look if it bore any trace of the fateful words having +been uttered. Everyone knew, though how no one could +tell, that that bold thing, Dosia Linden, had tried to get +him once, and failed. +</p> +<p> +The thing that had unaccountably stirred her most +since her arrival was an unexpected meeting with Bailey +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280'></a>280</span> +Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge held by either hand +and pressing close to her as they walked merrily along, +suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the +post-office; he seemed to make an instinctive movement as +if to draw back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks +and then turned them white. Were all the men in the place +trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, with bitter humor; +but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, and came +forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright +courtesy, a punctilious warmth of manner. He walked +along with her a few paces as he talked, lifting Zaidee +over a flooded crossing, before going once more on his +way. He was nothing to Dosia, the stranger who had killed +her ideal, yet all day it was as if his image were photographed +in the colors of life upon the retina of her eye; +she could not push it away, try as she might. +</p> +<p> +Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as +had sifted through the letters written by Lois; he had +been reported as going on in his old way in the mining-camps, +drifting from one to another. She heard nothing +more now. He was the only one who had really loved her +up here, except Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had +slipped into her now position of sister and helper as if she +had always filled it. She was not an outsider any more; she +<em>belonged</em>. +</p> +<div><a name='i280' id='i280'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i014' id='i014'></a> +<img src="images/i280.jpg" alt="After this he only appeared in the village street guarded on either side by a female Snow" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>After this he only appeared in the village street<br/>guarded on either side by a female Snow</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281'></a>281</span></div> +<p> +As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was +instinct with something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia +who had only wanted to be loved, now felt—after a year +of trial and conflict with death—that she only wanted, +and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, +even though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness +a strange and tragic thing that it should be all +she wanted. The mysterious, fathomless depression of +youth, as of something akin to unknown primal depths +of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; +but when Dosia “said her prayers,” she got, child-fashion, +very near to a Someone who brought her an intimate, +tender comfort of resurrection and of life. +</p> +<p> +“I don’t think Justin seems well,” she repeated, Lois, +looking up at her with calmly expressionless eyes from her +pillow, having taken no notice of the remark. “He has +changed, I think, even in the ten days since I came.” +</p> +<p> +“He has something on his mind,” assented Lois, with +a note of languor in her voice, “I suppose it’s the business—I +made up my mind to ask him about it to-night; he has +been out every evening lately, and I hardly see him at all +before he goes off in the morning, now that I don’t get +down to breakfast.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning,” +cried Dosia, with compunction at having so far forgotten +it. “He said that Mr. Larue had come in to inquire about +you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket of strawberries +and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow.” +</p> +<p> +“Eugene Larue!” Lois’ lips relaxed into a pleased +curve, a slight color touched her cheek. “That was very +nice of him; he knew I’d like to look forward to getting +them. Strawberries and roses!” +</p> +<p> +“I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after +you,” continued Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke +of him she might get that tiresome, insistent image of him +from before her eyes. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282'></a>282</span> +</p> +<p> +“Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows’. +Billy’s out West.” +</p> +<p> +“So I’ve heard,” said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life +that the man of all others whom she had desired to meet +should be thrown daily in her pathway now, after that +desire was gone! +</p> +<p> +“You’d better not talk any more now, Lois; you look +tired, it’s time for you to take a little rest. I’ll see to the +children, I hope baby will stay asleep. Let me put this +coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the shades?” +</p> +<p> +“No, I’d rather have the light. Please hand me that +book over there on the stand,” said Lois, holding out her +hand for the big, old-fashioned brown volume that Dosia +brought to her. +</p> +<p> +“You oughtn’t to read, you ought to go to sleep,” said +Dosia, with tender severity. +</p> +<p> +“I’m not going to read,” returned Lois pacifically. +Her hand closed over the book, she smiled, and Dosia +closed the door. Lois turned to the sleeping child with a +peculiar delight in being quite alone with him—alone with +him, to think. +</p> +<p> +The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, +as the title-page proclaimed, “The Woman’s Kingdom,” +and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A neighbor had +brought it in to Lois during the first month of her convalescence—in +all the time she had had it, she had never +read any further than that title-page. +</p> +<p> +There is often more in the birth of a child than the +coming of another son or daughter into the world. Between +those forces of life and death a woman may also get +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283'></a>283</span> +her chance to be born anew, made over again, spiritually +as well as physically; in those long, restful hours afterwards, +when suspense is over and pain is over, and there +is a freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon +with renewed tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, +long ways. To face danger bravely in itself gives strength +for the clearer vision, and a peculiarly loved child unlocks +with its tiny hands springs unknown before. +</p> +<p> +Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had +never felt toward either of the other children at all as +she did now toward this little boy. She could not bear +to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible corrosive +selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her—for +a little while only? She only felt at first that she must not +think of those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back +into the pit again; even to think of the slimy powers of +darkness gave them a fresh hold on one. She put off her +return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet to +lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband’s +gaze when he came home, and to talk to him about the +baby as a child might talk about a new toy, though she +could not but begin to perceive that she was as far, far +out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child. +</p> +<p> +One evening he came in to sit by her,—her convalescence +had been a long and dragging one,—and she had paused +in the midst of telling him something to await an answer. +None came. She spoke again, and raised herself to look. +Then she saw that even within that brief space he had +fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. +Thoroughly exhausted! Everything proclaimed it—his +attitude, grimly grotesque in the dim light, one leg +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284'></a>284</span> +stretched out half in front of the other, as he had dropped +into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head +resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the +face sharply upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows +under his cheek-bones and in those lines that marked his +temples. Divested of color and the transforming play of +expression, he looked strangely old, terribly lifeless. He +slept without moving,—almost, it seemed, without breathing,—while +Lois, with a new dread, watched him with +frightened, dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown +like this? What unnoticed change had been at work? She +called him again, but he did not hear; she stretched out +her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed +to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him +again; an icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. +What if never, never, never—— +</p> +<p> +Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying +naturally, “Did you speak?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, you frightened me so! Don’t go to sleep like that +again,” said Lois, with a shaking voice. “Come here.” +</p> +<p> +He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his +cheek close to hers with a rush of painful emotion. “Why, +you mustn’t get worked up over a little thing like that,” +he objected lightly, going out of the room afterwards +with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him +with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in +months, she thought of him without any idea of benefit +to herself. +</p> +<p> +The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the +title arrested her attention oddly—“The Woman’s Kingdom.” +Another phrase correlated with it in her +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285'></a>285</span> +memory—“Queen of the Home.” The home was supposed to be +woman’s domain, where she was the sovereign power; there +she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of +favors. <em>The Woman’s Kingdom, Queen of the Home.</em> +Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of retrospect, +led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby’s fingers; +<em>they</em> kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made +her own? She poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a +beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the +heart of her husband—there lay her woman’s kingdom, her +realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering +of it, none other; she had married a good man. Glad or +sorry, that kingdom was as her rule made it; she must be +judged by her government—as she was queen enough to +hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words. +</p> +<p> +Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less +disconnectedly,—set in motion by those magic words,—when +she lay at rest in the afternoons, with the book in +her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside her. +Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can +never perceive from imagination, but only from experience—who +cannot even adequately sympathize with sorrows +and conditions which they have not personally lived +through. No advice touches them, for the words that embody +it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes +of the past seem to have been necessary, when they +look back. Given the same circumstances, they could not +have acted differently; but they seldom look back—the +present, that is always climbing on into the future, occupies +them exclusively. +</p> +<p> +Lois with “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand, felt +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286'></a>286</span> +that some source of power and happiness which she had +not realized had slipped from her grasp, yet might still +be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish thoughts +came with the words—historic names of women whom men +had loved devotedly, who had kept them as their friends +and lovers even when they themselves had grown old, +women who had never lost their charm. There were those +women of the French salons, who could interest even other +generations; Queens indeed! She couldn’t really interest +one man! She thought over the married couples of her +acquaintance, in search of those who should reveal some +secret, some guiding light. One woman across the street +had no other object in life than purveying to the household +comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to +expect nothing from him in return; if William liked +his fish, she was repaid. A couple farther down appeared +to be held together by the fact of marriage, nothing more; +they were bored to death by each other’s society. Another +couple were happily absorbed in their children, to +whom they were both sacrificially subordinate. With none +of these conditions could Lois be satisfied. Then, there +were the women who always spoke as if a man were an +animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but +Lois was very much a woman! She settled at last, after +penetrative thought, on one husband and wife, the latter +a plain little person no longer young. Every man liked to +go to her charming, comfortable house; every man admired +her; and that her husband, a very handsome man +himself, admired her most of all was unobtrusively evident. +Every look, every gesture, betrayed the charming, vivifying +unity between those two. How was it accomplished? +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287'></a>287</span> +</p> +<p> +How could one interest a man like that? There was +Eugene Larue—she could interest him! The thought of +him always gave her a sense of conscious power; he paid +her homage. She did not know what his relations were +with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she +felt her woman’s kingdom. If you could talk to the soul +of a man like that as if he had the soul of an angel, and +learn from him what you wanted to know—get his guidance—But +Lois was before all things inviolably a wife, +with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between +her and Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes +that in some brief moment she might reveal in words, +to be forever regretted afterwards, conditions which he +knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene Larue +would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be +loved that way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her +heart. If they two, she and Eugene, had met while both +were free? The answer was what she had known it would +be, else she had not dared to make the test—the man who +was her husband was the only man who could ever have +been her husband. Justin! +</p> +<p> +With “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand now, her +lips touching the cheek of the soft little darling thing +beside her, she felt that some knowledge had been gradually +revealed to her, of which she was now really aware +only for the first time. Justin was not looking well—that +was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! +But she would make him forget his cares, his anxieties, +with this new-found power of hers; she would bewitch him, +take him off his feet, so that he would be able to think +of nothing, of no one, but her—he had not always thought +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288'></a>288</span> +of her! No, no—she would not remember that, <em>she would +not pity herself</em>. She would learn to laugh, even if it took +heroic effort—men liked you to laugh, she had always +taken everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, +<em>dead</em> face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, +painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as +Dosia said, he didn’t look well. Oh, when he came home to-night——! +</p> +<p> +She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft +yellowish gown with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for +months. The color was more brilliant than ever in her +cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply blue. The +children exclaimed over their “pretty mamma”; she +looked younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen +her. The latter could not help saying: +</p> +<p> +“How lovely you are, Lois! And you’re all dressed up, +too; do you expect anyone?” +</p> +<p> +“Only Justin,” said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Only Justin”! The words brought an exquisite joy +with them—only Justin, the one man in all the world for +her. There was but a half-hour now until dinner-time. It +had passed, and he had not come; but he was often late—Still +he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The +two women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby +woke up afterwards, an unusual thing, and wailed, and +would not stop; Lois, divested of her rich apparel and +once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and +soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts +to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, +trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up +again, to find Lois at last lying down. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289'></a>289</span> +</p> +<p> +“It’s eleven o’clock, Lois; I think I’ll go to bed. Shall +I leave the gas burning down-stairs?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, please do; he can’t get anything now but the +last train out.” +</p> +<p> +“And you don’t want me to stay here with you?” +</p> +<p> +“No—oh, no.” +</p> +<p> +As once before, Lois waited for that train—yet how +differently! If that injured feeling rose, for an instant, +at his not having sent her word, she crushed it back as +one would crush the head of a viper that showed itself between +the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity +herself—she would not pity herself! She knew now that +madness lay that way. +</p> +<p> +The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, +as she got up and sat by the window, looking out from +behind the curtain, her beautiful braided hair over one +shoulder. The last train came in, the people from it, in +twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. +He must have missed that last train out—of course he +must have missed it! +</p> +<p> +We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; +the amount of “worry” more or less willingly indulged +in by uncontrolled minds seems at times enough to swamp +the understanding. Yet there is a foreboding, unsought, +unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be +counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed +quality of truth. +</p> +<p> +Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290'></a>290</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</h2> +<p> +“And you haven’t heard <em>anything</em> of him yet?” +</p> +<p> +“Not yet, Mrs. Alexander. I’m sorry—oh, +so sorry—to have nothing more to tell you. +But I’m sure we’ll hear something before morning.” +</p> +<p> +Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly +on Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little +hallway, looking up at him, with Dosia behind her. This +was the third night since that one when Justin had failed +to appear, and there had been no word from him in the interim. +Owing to that curious way that women have of +waiting for events to happen that will end suspense, rather +than seeking to end it by any unaccustomed action of +their own, no inquiry had been made at the Typometer +Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which +had been passed in the hourly expectation of hearing +from Justin or seeing him walk in. However, nobody at +the company knew anything of Justin’s movements, except +that he had left the office rather early the afternoon before, +and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It +was presumable that he had been called suddenly out of +town, and had sent some word to Mrs. Alexander that had +miscarried. +</p> +<p> +That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who +was evidently disquieted, though bluffly and rather irritatingly +making light of her fears; he seemed to be both +a little reluctant and a little contemptuous. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291'></a>291</span> +</p> +<p> +“My dear Mrs. Alexander, you can’t expect a fellow +to be always tied to his wife’s apron-strings! He doesn’t +tell you everything. We like to have a free foot once in a +while. Why, my wife’s glad when I get off for a day or +two—coaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything +happening to Alexander—well, an able-bodied man can +look out for himself every time; there’s nothing in the +world to be anxious about. He’s meant to wire to you and +forgotten to do it, that’s all—I forgot it myself last +year, when I was called away suddenly, but Myra didn’t +turn a hair; she knew I was all right. And if I were you, +Mrs. Alexander,—this is just a tip,—I wouldn’t go +around telling <em>everyone</em> that he’s gone off and you don’t +know where he is. It’s the kind of thing folks get talking +about in all kinds of ways; his affairs aren’t in any too +good shape, as he may have told you.” +</p> +<p> +“Isn’t the business all right?” queried Lois, with a +puzzled fear. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, of course—all right; but—I wouldn’t go +around wondering about his being away; he’s got his own +reasons. You haven’t a telephone, have you? I’ll send +around word to have one put in to-day. I’ll tell you what, +I’ll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the +quiet—he’s got lots of wires he can pull. You won’t need +me any more.” +</p> +<p> +Leverich’s meeting with Dosia had been characterized on +his part by a show of brusque uninterest; he seemed to her +indefinably lowered and coarsened in some way—his cheeks +sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant admission that he +must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. And +Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292'></a>292</span> +benefits from him, caressed him prettily! He had been +really kind to her, she ought not to let that fact be defaced, +but everything connected with that time seemed to +lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of horror. +All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an +undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the +two women tenfold greater when he was gone. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, +as well as Lois, had seen him both times; he had greeted +her with matter-of-fact courtesy, and appealed to her with +earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for details or +confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs. +Alexander, but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his +manner the day he had avoided her in the street was lacking. +There was certainly nothing in Dosia’s quietly impersonal +attitude to call it forth. Her face no longer +swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for +anyone to see—poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school +her woman’s lesson of concealment. +</p> +<p> +But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, +toward Lois his sympathy was instinct with strength and +helpfulness. He seemed to have affiliations with reporters, +with telegraph operators, and with a hundred lower runways +of life unknown to other people. He gave the tortured +wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in +sorrow, of his being entirely one with her in its absorption—of +there being no other interest, no other issue in life, +but this one of Justin’s return. When Girard came, bright +and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be set at rest; +during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were +swept away, everything was on the right train, word +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293'></a>293</span> +would arrive from Justin at once; and when he left, all was +black and terrible again. +</p> +<p> +The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these +strange days when mamma never seemed to hear their questions. +Dosia read to them, made merry for them, and saw +to the household, which was dependent on the service of +a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to +put her young arms around Lois and hold her close with +aching pity. +</p> +<p> +The suspense of these days had changed Lois terribly—her +cheeks were hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes +looked twice their natural size, with the black circles below +them. Only the knowledge that her baby’s welfare—perhaps +his life—depended on her, kept her from giving way +entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack +of croup, which necessitated a visit from the doctor +and further anxiety. Toward afternoon of this third day +a man came to put in the telephone, which set them in +touch with the unseen world. Girard’s voice over it later +had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate +ending of the mystery. +</p> +<p> +Everything was excitement—delicacies were bought, in +case Justin might like them, Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly +dressed in their best “to see dear papa,” and, even +though they had to go to bed without the desired result, +Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated +promise that the father should come up-stairs to +kiss them as soon as he got in. +</p> +<p> +Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in +the suddenly sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, +at Girard’s word that nothing more had been heard, as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294'></a>294</span> +she was still looking up at him everything turned black +before her. She found herself half lying on the little +spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, +her head pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia +fanning her, while Girard leaned against the little mirrored +mantelpiece with set face and contracted brows. +Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as if +to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion; she looked up +at Girard and tried to smile with piteous, brimming eyes. +</p> +<p> +“Ah, don’t!” he said, with a quick gesture. His voice +had an odd sound, as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with +it mingled also a compassionate tenderness so great that it +seemed to inform not only his face but his whole attitude +as he bent over her. +</p> +<p> +“You’re very good to be so sorry for me,” she +whispered. +</p> +<p> +He made a swift gesture of protest. “There’s one thing +I can’t stand—to see a woman suffer.” +</p> +<p> +She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and +then motioned him to the seat beside her. When she spoke +again, it was slowly, as if she were trying to concentrate +her mind: +</p> +<p> +“You have known sorrow?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> +<p> +“Tell me.” +</p> +<p> +He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for +a moment in that of another, yet the effort to obey evidently +cost him much. They had both spoken as if they +two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn to +the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the +lamp, sat there in her white cotton frock, leaning a little +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295'></a>295</span> +forward, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face +upraised and her eyes looking somewhere beyond. So still +was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a +spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. +In such moments as these she prayed for Lawson. +</p> +<p> +“I”—it was Girard who spoke at last—“my mother—Cater +said once that he’d told you something about me.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I remember.” +</p> +<p> +“It’s hard to talk about it, yet sometimes I feel as if +I’d like to. You see, I was so little when we drifted off, +she and I. I didn’t know how to help, how to save her +anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since that I +ought to have known—I ought to have known!” His +hands clenched, his voice had subsided to a groan. +</p> +<p> +“You were her comfort when you least thought it,” +said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps; I’ve always hoped so, in my saner moments. +No matter how I should try I could never tell anyone what +that time was really like. It seems now as if we were wandering +for years, but I don’t suppose it was for so very long. +We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at +night, always trying to keep away from people, when—she +thought we were going back to our old home in the South, +and that they would prevent us.” He stopped for a moment, +and then went on, driven by that Ancient Mariner +spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a +forbidden subject, probe it to its haunting depths. “Did +Cater tell you how she died? She died in a barn. My +<em>mother</em>! She used to hold me in her arms at night, and +make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; +and I didn’t even have a pillow for her when she was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296'></a>296</span> +dying; it’s one of those things you can never make up for—that +you can never change, no matter how you live, +no matter what you do. It comes back to you when you +least expect it.” +</p> +<p> +Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: +“But the pain ended in happiness and peace for her. It +would hurt her more than anything to know that you +grieved.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I believe that,” he acquiesced simply. “I’m glad +you said it now. I couldn’t rest until I got money enough +to take her out of her pauper grave and lay her by the +side of her own people at home.” +</p> +<p> +“And you have had a pretty hard time.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that’s nothing!” He squared his shoulders with +unconscious rebuttal of sympathy. “When I was a kid, +perhaps—but I get a lot of pleasure out of life.” +</p> +<p> +“But you must be lonely without anyone belonging +to you,” said Lois, trying to grope her way into the +labyrinth. “Wouldn’t you be happier if you were married?” +</p> +<p> +He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a +slight flush that seemed to come from the embarrassment +of some secret thought. The action, and the change of +expression, made him singularly charming. “Possibly; but +the chance of that is small. Women—that is, unmarried +women—don’t care for my society.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, oh!” protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as +she looked at him, of how much the reverse the truth must +be. “But if you found the right woman you might make +her care for you.” +</p> +<p> +He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297'></a>297</span> +eyes. “No; there you’re wrong. I’d never make any +woman care for me, because I’d never want to. If she +couldn’t care for me without my <em>making</em> her—! I’d have +to know, when I first looked at her, that she was <em>mine</em>. +And if she were not, if she did not care for me herself, I’d +never want to make her—never!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, oh!” protested Lois again, with interested amusement, +shattered the next instant as a fragile glass may be +shattered by the blow of a hammer. +</p> +<p> +The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, +closing the intervening door behind him. The curtain +of anxiety, lifted for breathing-space for a moment, +hung over them again somberly, like a pall. Where was +Justin? +</p> +<p> +The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on +Girard’s movements; his low, murmuring voice told nothing. +When he returned to where they stood, his face was +impassive. +</p> +<p> +“Nothing new; I’m just going to town for a couple of +hours, that’s all.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, must you leave us?” +</p> +<p> +“I’m coming back, if you’ll let me.” He bent over Lois +with that earnest look which seemed somehow to insure protection. +“I want you to let me stay down-stairs here all +night, if you will; I’m going to make arrangements to get +a special message through, no matter what time it comes, +and I’ll sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you +and Miss Linden can sleep.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’d be so glad to have you here! Redge has that +croupy cough again. But you can’t sit up,” said Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Why not? It’s luxury to stay awake in a comfortable +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298'></a>298</span> +chair with a lot of books around. I’ll be back in a couple +of hours without fail.” +</p> +<p> +A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the +words could have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of +desolation. Hardly had he gone, however, when the door-bell +rang, and word was brought to Lois, who with Dosia +had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the typometer office. +The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated +man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room +with a decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on +the edge of his chair, his body bent forward and his hat +still held in one hand, with an effect of being entirely +isolated from social relations and existing here solely at +the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, +and handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, +before reseating himself. +</p> +<p> +“Thank you very much,” said Lois. “This is the money, +I suppose. I’m sorry you went to the trouble of bringing +it out yourself, I thought you might send me a +check.” +</p> +<p> +Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a +smile. “That’s the trouble, Mrs. Alexander, we can’t send +any checks, Mr. Alexander is the one who does that. Everything +is in Mr. Alexander’s name. I went to Mr. Leverich +to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things, +but he doesn’t seem inclined to take hold at all, though he +could help us out easily enough if he wanted to. I—there’s +no use keeping it back, Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty +bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay away. He ought to be +home.” +</p> +<p> +“Why, yes,” said Lois. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299'></a>299</span> +</p> +<p> +“Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, +very unpleasant position.” Mr. Harker spoke with a sort +of somber monotony, with his gaze on the ground. “The +business requires the most particular management at the +moment—the most particular. I—” He raised his eyes with +such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time +that this manner of his might not be his usual manner, +but was called forth by the stress of anxiety. For the first +time also, the force of the daily tie of business companionship +was borne in upon her. She looked at Mr. Harker. +This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she +did—knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better. +</p> +<p> +He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: “Mrs. +Alexander, your husband and I have worked together for +a year and a half now, with never a word between us. I’m +ready to swear by him any moment, if I’ve got him to +swear by. I’ll back him up in anything, no matter what, if +it’s his say-so—we’ve pulled through a good many tight +places. But I can’t do it alone; it’s madness to try. If he +doesn’t show up, I’d better close the place down at once.” +</p> +<p> +“Why do you say this to me?” asked Lois, shrinking +a little. +</p> +<p> +“Why? because,—Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to +mince words; if you know where your husband is, for God’s +sake, get word to him to come back—every minute is precious. +He may be ill—Heaven knows he had enough to +make him so; my wife knows the strain I’ve been through, +she says she wonders I’m alive,—but he can’t look after his +health now. If he’s on top of ground, he’s got to <em>come</em>. I’ve +put every cent I own into this business. I haven’t drawn +my whole salary, even, for months. I don’t know what +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300'></a>300</span> +reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustn’t +give out now.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Harker!” cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, +who had come forward. “What does he mean?” +</p> +<p> +“She doesn’t know where her husband is,” said the +girl convincingly. Her eyes and Mr. Harker’s met. The +somber eagerness faded out of his; he sighed and rose. +</p> +<p> +“Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think +I’ll hurry to catch the next train; I haven’t been home to +my dinner yet.” +</p> +<p> +“Won’t you have something here before you go?” +asked Lois. “It’s so late.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that’s nothing, I’m used to it,” returned Mr. Harker, +with a pale smile and the passive, self-effacing business +manner as he departed, while Lois went up-stairs once more. +The baby cried, and she soothed him, holding the warm +little form close, closer to her—something tangible before +she put him down again to step back into this strange void +where Justin was not. +</p> +<p> +For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, +Lois realized the existence of a world beyond her ken—a +world that had been Justin’s. New as the visitor’s words +had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of herculean +struggle; the way this man had looked—his wife had “wondered +that he was still alive.” And Justin—where was he +now? <em>She</em> had not noticed, she had not wondered—until +lately. +</p> +<p> +Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her +help, it was the one thing now that kept her reason firm. +She knew that she had not been all unfaithful; sometimes +he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301'></a>301</span> +near. She had suffered, too, <em>she</em> had longed for his help and +sympathy. No, she would not think of <em>that</em>; she would +not! When two are separated, one must love enough to +bridge the gulf—what matter which one? It seemed now +as if there were so much that she might have given, as if +all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might +have been poured out and poured out at his feet—lavished +on him, without regard to need or fitness or expense, as +Mary lavished her precious box of spikenard on One she +loved. Now that he was gone, there could be nothing too +hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to +have said to him. +</p> +<p> +Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him +hoarsely to be still; and then, suddenly conscience-stricken +and fearful at the slighting of this other demand of love,—what +awful reprisal might it not exact from her?—she went +to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy that +Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother +would stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the +grinding and destroying wheel of thought had her bound +to it once more. +</p> +<p> +He could not have left her of his own will! If he did +not come, it would be because he was dead—and then he +could never know, never, never know. There would be nothing +left to her but the place where he had been. She looked +at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them +for the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and +fell on her knees, and went on them around the room, +dragging herself from chair to sofa, from sofa to bed,—these +were the Stations of the Cross that she was making,—with +sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302'></a>302</span> +them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the +Almighty. Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought +of her; on this table—here—and here—and here his head +had lain. Her tears ceased; she buried her face in the +pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was, in this +world or another. For he was her husband—where he was +she must be, either in body or in spirit. +</p> +<p> +The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice +at the other end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it +seemed; withholding information from any other. The doctor +rang up, in response to an earlier call, with directions +for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been laid down when +the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the ringing +of bells! +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303'></a>303</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</h2> +<p> +This time, of course, the visitor was Mrs. Snow. +In any exigency, any mind- and body-absorbing +event of life, the inopportune presence of Mrs. +Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came +always as one of those exasperating recurrences which +bring with them a ridiculously fresh irritation each time. It +seemed to be the one extra thing you couldn’t stand; in +either trouble or joy she affected you like a clinging, ankle-flapping +mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to +Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive +warmth of the greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying +down-stairs out of those passion-depths of darkness so +that Mrs. Snow wouldn’t suspect anything. She had an uncanny +faculty of divining just what you didn’t want +her to. +</p> +<p> +Once before Lois had suspended tragedy for Mrs. Snow. +The same things happen to us over and over again daily +in our crowded yet restricted lives—it is we who change +in our meeting with them. We have our great passions, our +great joys, our heartbreaks, no matter how small our environment. +</p> +<p> +“How do you do, my dear? Mr. Girard has just told +me that he was going to stay here to-night, in Mr. Alexander’s +absence. He said little Redge was threatened with +the croup. Now, if I had only known that Mr. Alexander +was away, <em>I</em> could have come and stayed with you!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304'></a>304</span> +</p> +<p> +“Oh, that wasn’t at all necessary,” said Lois hastily. +“Thank you very much. Do sit down, won’t you, Mrs. +Snow?” +</p> +<p> +“Only for a minute, then; I must go back to Bertha,” +said Mrs. Snow, seating herself and fumbling for something +under her cloak. “I just came over to read you a +letter. It’s in my bag—I can’t seem to find it. Well, perhaps +I’d better rest for a minute.” Mrs. Snow’s face looked +unusually lined and set; in spite of her plaintiveness, her +eyes had a harassed glitter. +</p> +<p> +“Isn’t it rather late for you to be out alone?” asked +Lois. +</p> +<p> +“Yes; Ada would have come around here with me, but +she was expecting Mr. Sutton. She was expecting him last +night, but he didn’t come. If <em>I</em> were a young lady, I’d let a +gentleman wait for <em>me</em> the next time; it used to be thought +more attractive, in my day, but Ada’s so afraid of not +seeming cordial; gentlemen seem to be so sensitive nowadays! +I said to her, ‘Ada, when a man is enough at home +in a house to kick the cat, and ask for cake whenever he +feels like it, I do <em>not</em> see that it is necessary to stand on +ceremony with him.’ But Ada thinks differently.” +</p> +<p> +“It is difficult to make rules,” said Lois vaguely. +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Snow. “As I was saying to Bertha, +you don’t find a young man like Mr. Girard so considerate +of everyone—not that he’s so <em>very</em> young, either; I’m +sure he often appears much older than he is. It’s his manner—he +has a manner like my dear father. He and Bertha +have long chats together; really, he is what <em>I</em> would call +quite attentive, though she won’t hear of such a thing—but +sometimes young men <em>do</em> take a great fancy for older +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305'></a>305</span> +girls. I had a friend who married a gentleman twenty-seven +years younger—he died soon afterwards. But many +people think nothing of a little difference of twelve or +fifteen years. I said to Bertha this morning, ‘Bertha, if +you’d dress yourself a little younger—if you’d only wear +a blue bow in your hair.’ But no; I can’t say anything +nowadays to my own children without being flown at!” +Mrs. Snow’s voice trembled. “If my darling William were +here!” +</p> +<p> +“Have you heard from William lately?” asked Lois, +with supreme effort. +</p> +<p> +“My dear, he’s in Chicago. I came over to read you a +letter from him that I got to-night. That new postman +left it at the Scovels’, by mistake, and they never sent it +over until a little while ago. There was a sentence in it,” +Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, “that I thought +you’d like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. ‘Next month +I hope to be able to send you more’—no, no, that’s not it. +‘When my socks get holes in them I throw them’—that’s +not it, either. Oh! he says, ‘I caught a glimpse of Mr. +Alexander last night, getting on a West Side car’—this +was written yesterday morning. ‘I called to him, but too +late. I’m sorry, for I’d like to have seen him.’ That’s all, +but Mr. Girard seemed so pleased with the letter, I promised +that I would bring it around to you that very minute,—<em>he</em> +had to run for the train,—but I was detained. He thought +you’d like to hear that William had seen Mr. Alexander.” +</p> +<p> +Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois +faint. Yet, after Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions +began to repeat themselves again. Justin was alive—Justin +was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive now? And why +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306'></a>306</span> +had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no +word? The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. +Every fear that imagination could devise seemed to center +around this new fact. +</p> +<p> +She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little +drawing-room, making it ready for Girard’s occupancy—pulling +out a big chair for his use, and putting fresh books +on the table. The maid had long ago gone to bed, and there +was coffee to be made for him—he might get hungry in +the night. When he came in at last, he brought all the +brightness and courage of hope with him; he had wired to +William, he had phoned to a dozen different places in +Chicago. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, what should we do without you?” breathed Lois, +her foot on the stairway. +</p> +<p> +“It doesn’t seem to me I’ve helped you very much so +far, our one clue has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to +go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. Alexander; take all the +rest you can. I’m here to do the watching. If there’s anything +really to tell, I’ll call you, I promise faithfully. +What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me?” +</p> +<p> +“There was a message for you while you were gone,” +said Dosia in a low tone. +</p> +<p> +His eyes assented. “Yes, I went there—to the place +that they—but it wasn’t Alexander, I’m glad to say, though +I was afraid when I went in——” +</p> +<p> +“I know,” said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +Another strange night had begun, with the master of +the house away. Lois went to her room to lie down clothed, +jumping up to come to the head of the stairs whenever the +telephone-bell rang, and then going back again when she +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307'></a>307</span> +found that those who were consulting were asking for information +instead of giving it, but by and by the messages +ceased. +</p> +<p> +Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that +he had been gone for years, and tried confusedly to plan +out the future. There were the children—how should she +support them? She must support them. It was hard to +get work when you had a baby. If she hadn’t the baby—no +one should take the baby from her! She clasped him to +her for a moment in terror, as if she were being hunted, +before she grew calm and began planning again. There +was only a little money left—to-morrow they must still +eat. She must make the money last. +</p> +<p> +Dosia, on the bed by Redge’s crib, went softly after a +while into the other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, +though she herself could not. Each time that she saw Girard +he seemed more and more a stranger, so far removed was +he from her dream of him; through all his softness, his +gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else +did—though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken +of it too—that the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps +no man could have worked up from the cruel circumstances +of his early days without that hardening streak to uphold +him. She divined, with some surprising new power of divination, +that in spite of all his strong, capable dealing with +actualities and his magnetic drawing of men, for the +inner conduct of his own life he was shyly dependent on +odd, deeply held theory—theory that he had solitarily +woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry for him, +as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was +nothing to her. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308'></a>308</span> +</p> +<p> +Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the +night, her tired eyes wide open, close to Redge’s crib, with +his little hot hand clinging to hers, the mere fact of Girard’s +bodily presence in the house, down-stairs, seemed something +overpoweringly insistent; she couldn’t get away from it. +It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it called +forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with +Lawson—unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher +excitement. This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely +enough, something not to be escaped from; it pulsed +in every vein, keeping her awake. She tried to lose it in +the thought of Lois’ great trouble, of this weighting, pitiful +mystery of Justin’s absence—of what it meant to him +and to the household; she tried to lose it in the thought of +Lawson, with the prayer that always instinctively came at +his name. Nothing availed; through everything was that +wearing, persistent consciousness of Girard’s bodily presence +down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so that she +might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A +voice spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet +instantly: +</p> +<p> +“Dosia?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, Lois, dearest, I’m here.” +</p> +<p> +“Has any word come from Justin?” +</p> +<p> +“No.” +</p> +<p> +Lois shivered. “I think, when Redge wakes up next, +you’d better give him a drink of water, he sounds so hoarse. +I’ve used all I brought up. Do you mind going down to +get some more? I would go myself, but I can’t slip my +arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the +pitcher.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309'></a>309</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the +coverlet tenderly over Lois, before stepping out into the +lighted hall. +</p> +<p> +It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. +Dosia went down the low, wide stairs with that indescribable +air of the watcher in the night. Her white cotton gown, +the same that she had worn throughout the afternoon, had +lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted folds; +the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white +necktie was half untied. One cheek was warm where it had +pressed the pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half +loosened, hung against it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a +rayed starriness, the pupils contracted from the sudden +light—her expression, tired and half bewildered, had in it +somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in the unwonted +middle of the night, who might go naturally and +comfortably into any kind arms held out to her. The turn +of the stairs brought her fronting the little drawing-room +and the figure of Girard, who sat leaning forward, smoking, +in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on the arm of +it and his head on his hand; the books and bric-à-brac +on the table beside him had been pushed back to make room +for the tray containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, +and a plate with some biscuits; a newspaper lay on the +floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the light in the hallway +and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect which +belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, +when the very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment +from the life of the day. Yet, in the midst of this +night silence, this withdrawing of the ordinary vital forces, +the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be extraordinarily +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310'></a>310</span> +instinct with vitality, even in that second before he moved; +his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with +such intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, +as instantly arresting, as the blast of a trumpet. +</p> +<p> +At the sound of Dosia’s light oncoming step opposite +the door, he rose at once, and with a quick stride stood beside +her. He seemed tall and unexpectedly dazzling as he +confronted her; his deep set gray eyes were very brilliant. +</p> +<p> +“What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill?” +</p> +<p> +“No—oh, no; the children have been restless, that is +all,” said Dosia, recovering, with annoyed self-possession, +from a momentary shock, and feeling disagreeably conscious +of looking tumbled and forlorn. “I came down to +get a pitcher of water.” +</p> +<p> +“Can’t I get it in the dining-room for you?” he asked, +with formal politeness. +</p> +<p> +“Thank you. The water isn’t running in the butler’s +pantry, I have to go in the kitchen for it. If you would +light the gas there for me——” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, certainly,” he responded promptly, pushing the +portières aside to make a passage for her, as he went ahead +to scratch a match and light the long, one-armed flickering +kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed floor, the +kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, +in which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There +was a sense as of the deep darkness of the night outside +around everything. +</p> +<p> +A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a +chair by the chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its +yellow eyes toward the two intruders. +</p> +<p> +“Let me fill this,” said Girard, taking the pitcher from +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311'></a>311</span> +her—a rather large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted +vine for a handle—and carrying it over to the faucet. The +intimacy of the hour and the scene emphasized the more +the punctilious aloofness of this enforced companionship. +</p> +<p> +Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the +water run, that it might grow cold. It sounded in the silence +as if it were falling on a drumhead. The moment—it was +hardly more—seemed interminable to Dosia. The white cat, +jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, +and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat +sideways that her cheek might touch him in recognition. +Some inner thought claimed her, to the exclusion of the +present; her eyes, looking dreamily before her, took on that +expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet. +</p> +<p> +Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident +that to caress, to <em>touch</em> her, seemed the involuntarily +natural expression of any feeling toward her. Something +in the bright, tendril-curling hair, the curve of her young +cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet rounded form, +with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as inevitable +an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with +always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and +retreated, ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of +some lovelier glimpse to come. +</p> +<p> +The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened +herself. She raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. +What was in them? The color flamed in her face and left +her white, although in a second there was nothing more to +see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came +toward her with the pitcher. +</p> +<p> +“I’ll take it now, please,” she said hurriedly. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312'></a>312</span> +</p> +<p> +“Won’t you let me carry it up for you?” +</p> +<p> +“Thank you, it isn’t necessary. I’ll go along, if you’ll +wait and turn out the light.” +</p> +<p> +“Very well. You’re sure it’s not too heavy for you?” +he asked anxiously, as her wrists bent a little with the +weight. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no, indeed,” said Dosia quickly, turning to go. +At that moment the white cat, jumping down from the +table in front of her, rubbed itself against her skirts, and +she stumbled slightly. +</p> +<p> +“Take care!” cried Girard, grasping the shaking +pitcher over her slight hold of it. +</p> +<p> +Their hands touched—for the first time since the night +of disaster, the night of her trust and his protection. The +next instant there was a crash—the fragments of the jug +lay upon the kitchen floor, the water streaming over it in +rivulets. +</p> +<p> +“Dosia!” called the frightened voice of Lois from +above. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I’m coming,” Dosia called back. “There’s nothing +the matter!” She had run from the room without +looking up at that figure beside her, snatching a glass of +water automatically from the dining-table as she passed +by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep +pace with her beating heart. +</p> +<p> +When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to +confirm the tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago. +</p> +<div><a name='i312' id='i312'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i015' id='i015'></a> +<img src="images/i312.jpg" alt="He came toward her with the pitcher" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>He came toward her with the pitcher</em></span> +</div> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313'></a>313</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</h2> +<p> +Justin was in Chicago,—the fact was verified, and +he would start for home on the morrow. There +seemed to be no details, save the comforting one +that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate +relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling +down upon her, all the more clingingly each time, +not to be fully dissipated, after all, until Justin’s bodily +return. +</p> +<p> +Girard had gone back very early to the Snows’ to breakfast. +He talked to Lois by telephone, but he did not come +to the house; while Dosia, wrapped in an outward abstraction +that concealed a whirl within, went about her daily +tasks, living over and over the scene of the night before. +The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered +something else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; +once—so far away that night of disaster had gone, so +long was it since she had held that protecting hand in her +dreams, that the touch brought a strange resurrection of +the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude to +him for something unexpressed, some quality which she +passionately revered, and which other men had not always +used toward her. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, he’s <em>good</em>, he’s good!” she whispered to herself, +with the tears blinding her, as she picked up Redge’s blocks +from the floor. She felt Lawson’s kisses on her lips, her +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314'></a>314</span> +throat—that cross of shame that she held always close to +her; George Sutton’s fat face thrust itself leeringly before +her. How many girls have passages in their lives to which +they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence +can feel! Yet the sense of Girard’s presence before +was as nothing to her sense of it now—it blotted out the +world. She saw him sitting alone in the dining-room, with +his head resting on his hand, the quiet attitude filled intensely +with life; the turn of his head, the shape of his +hand, were insistent things. She saw him standing in front +of her, long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked +pale and inert, it was because that inner thought of her +lived so hard that the body was worn out with it. +</p> +<p> +Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, +except the bare word that he had started home. Lois +was not expecting him until nine o’clock on the second +morning, the early trains from town were coming out at +inconvenient intervals, but just as Lois had finished +dressing, she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, +but cautiously, for fear of disturbing her baby, who had +dropped off to sleep again. +</p> +<p> +Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, +as she entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran +toward him. “Justin!” +</p> +<p> +He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. +He held her for a moment, and then said, “You’d +better sit down.” +</p> +<p> +“But, Justin—oh, my dearest, how ill you look!” She +clung to him. “Where have you been? Why didn’t you +send me any word?” +</p> +<p> +“I’ve been to Chicago.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315'></a>315</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?” +</p> +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> +<p> +“You don’t <em>know</em>?” +</p> +<p> +“Lois, will you give me some coffee?” +</p> +<p> +She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat +while he took a swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the +newspaper. At last she said: +</p> +<p> +“Aren’t you going to tell me any more?” +</p> +<p> +“There isn’t any more to tell. There’s no use talking +about it. I believe I had some idea of selling the island when +I went to Chicago, but I don’t know how I got there. I +didn’t know I was there until I woke up two nights ago +at a little hotel away out on the West Side; Billy pounded +on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for +twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I don’t +want to speak of it again, Lois; it wasn’t a particularly +pleasant thing to happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in +the rest of the breakfast? I must catch the eight-thirty +train back into town. I ought to have stopped there, but I +thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where +are the children?” +</p> +<p> +“They are coming down now with Dosia,” said his wife, +helping Mary with the dishes, as the patter of little feet +sounded in the hall. Redge ran up to his father, hitting +him jubilantly with a small stick which he held in his +chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon +him at once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted +over her little white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched +for her, and stood there leaning against “Daddy’s” side, +while he ate and drank hurriedly, with only one hand at +his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of jealousy +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316'></a>316</span> +at being shut out, but she heroically smothered the +feeling. +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he +brought me some money,” she ventured at last. +</p> +<p> +“That was all right.” +</p> +<p> +“And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that +night—until your message came.” +</p> +<p> +“I hope you haven’t been talking about this all over the +place.” +</p> +<p> +“No—oh, no,” said Lois, driving back the tears at this +causeless injury. “Mr. Leverich—he was here one morning—said +it was best not to. He was rather unpleasant, though. +But nobody knows about your being away at all. You’re +not going now, Justin—without even seeing baby?” +</p> +<p> +“I’ll see him to-night when I come home,” said Justin, +rising. He kissed the children and his wife hastily, but she +followed him into the hall, standing there, dumbly beseeching, +while he brushed his hat with the hat-brush on +the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something +else. +</p> +<p> +“Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking +for,” she said. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, thank you.” He bent over and kissed her again, +as if really seeing her for the first time, with a whispered +“Poor girl!” That momentary close embrace brought her +a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. She who had +hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly +thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner +bond. +</p> +<p> +But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense +that had been hers for five days past; the strain was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317'></a>317</span> +to end, of course, with Justin’s return, but it had +not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it seemed to have just +begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never to +hear any more? +</p> +<p> +That night Girard came over, but with him was another +visitor—William Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair +skin of William’s, but he had an indefinably large and +Western air; the very way in which he wore his clothes +showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, +covert, shamefaced glance at her when she came into the +room where he was talking to Lois—his avoidance of her +the year before had dropped clear out of her mind; but +his expression changed to one of complacent delight as she +ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands +to cry, “Oh, Billy, Billy, I’m so glad to see you! I am so +glad—I can’t tell you how glad I am!” +</p> +<p> +“All right, Sweetness, you’re not going to lose me +again,” said William encouragingly. “My, but you do +knock the spots out of those Western girls. Can’t we go +in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to +marry me before we talk any more.” +</p> +<p> +“Yes, do,” said Dosia, dimpling. +</p> +<p> +It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once +more, to take refuge from all disconcerting thoughts—and +from the new embarrassment of Girard’s presence—with +Billy in the corner of the other room, where she sat +in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in +front of her. Through the open window the scent of +honeysuckle came in with the gloom. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, but you’ve grown pretty!” he said, his hands +clasped over his knees, gazing at her. “That’s right, get +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318'></a>318</span> +pink—it makes you prettier. I like this slimpsy sort of +dress you’ve got on; I like that black velvet around your +throat; I—have you missed me much?” +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. “I’ve +hardly thought of you at all. But I feel now as if I had.” +</p> +<p> +Billy nodded. “All right, I’ll pay you up for that some +day. Oh, Dosia, you may think I’m joking, but I’m not! +There have been days and nights when I’ve done nothing +but plan the things I was going to do and say to make +you care for me—but they’re all gone the moment I lay eyes +on you. I’ll talk of whatever you like afterwards, but I’ve +got to say first,”—Billy’s voice, deep and manly and confident, +had yet a little shake in it,—“that nobody is going +to marry you but me, and don’t you forget it. I’m no +kid any more.” Something in his tone gave his words +emphasis. “I know how to look out for you better than +anyone else does.” +</p> +<p> +“Dear Billy,” said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek +momentarily against the rough sleeve of his coat, “it’s so +good to have you back again.” +</p> +<p> +“I’m no kid any more,” said William warningly. +</p> +<p> +Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening +to come, so that she could be alone with her husband, +sat in the drawing-room, trying to sew with nervous, trembling +fingers, while her husband, looking frightfully tired, +and Bailey Girard smoked and talked—of all things in the +world!—of the relative merits of live bait or “spoon” bait +in trolling, and afterwards went minutely into details of +the manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout. +</p> +<p> +Those waste “social” hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, +that must be lived through before one can get +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319'></a>319</span> +to the place just ahead of them—how long, how unbearably +long, they can seem! Lois’ face twitched, as well as her +fingers; Girard’s voice, lucidly expressionless, went on and +on in reminiscent detail, and Justin, looking frightfully +tired, but apparently deeply interested, remembered and +remembered the day they caught this, and the way they +landed that and, with exasperating monotony, drew diagrams +corroboratingly with two fingers on the table beside +him. She did not realize, as women do not, that to Justin +this conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his +present life or his present anxiety, was like coming up +from under-depths to breathe at a necessary air-hole. +</p> +<p> +After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk +of nothing but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard +himself had wondered, but he accepted the position allotted +to him as a matter of course. He had thought, from Justin’s +manner to-day, that he was to know something of his +affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him, +that was all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; +they were none of his business, anyway. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly a word in the fishing conversation caught the +ears of the two who were sitting in the dining-room, in a +momentary pause. +</p> +<p> +“That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went +down on the Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he’s +dead.” +</p> +<p> +Lawson! Dosia’s face changed as if a whip had flicked +across it, and then trembled back into its normal quiet. +William leaned a little nearer, his eyes curiously scanning +her. +</p> +<p> +“Hadn’t you heard before?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320'></a>320</span> +</p> +<p> +“No; what?” +</p> +<p> +“He’s dead.” +</p> +<p> +“Lawson <em>dead</em>! Not Lawson?” Her dry lips illy formed +the words. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, Dosia—don’t look like that—don’t let them see +in there, Girard is looking at you; turn your face toward +me. Leverich told us, coming up to-night. Lawson died a +week ago.” +</p> +<p> +“How?” +</p> +<p> +“Fell from his horse somewhere up in a cañon—he was +drunk, I reckon. They found him twenty-four hours afterwards; +the superintendent of the mines wrote to Leverich. +He’d tried to keep pretty straight out there, all +but the drinking, I guess that was too much for him. It +was the best thing he could do—to die—as Girard says. +Girard hates the very sound of his name.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh,” breathed Dosia painfully. +</p> +<p> +“The superintendent said that some of the miners +chipped in to bury him, and the woman he boarded with +sent a pencil scrawl along with the superintendent’s letter +to say that she’d ‘miss Mr. Barr dreadful,—that he’d get +up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and the kids, +they thought the world of him.’ She signed herself, ‘A +true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.’” +</p> +<p> +Lawson was dead! +</p> +<p> +Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billy’s sleeve as at +first—something tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had +gone far beyond the room, even that haunting knowledge +that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden +subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a +dead body—Lawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321'></a>321</span> +caressing eyes, those curving, passionate lips, closed forever, +the blood oozing from between his dark locks. Always +she had secretly visioned some distant day when, Lucile-like, +she might be near him, helping, though he would not +know it until he lay dying. As ever with poor Dosia, there +was that sharp, unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. +Of what avail her prayers, her belief in him, +when he had died thus? Oh, she had not prayed enough! +She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she +had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just +a little—he had “tried to keep pretty straight, all but +the drinking; that was too much for him.” +</p> +<p> +That covered some resistance in an under-world of +which she knew nothing. Poor Lawson, who had so early +lost his chance, whose youth had been poisoned at the +start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and reveler, +part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,—once his promised +wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,—must +always lie too, buried with him; nothing could undo +that. To die so causelessly! But the miners had “chipped +in” for a resting-place for him—they had cared a little; +he had been kind to a woman and her little children—“the +kids had thought the world of him”; she was “a true +mourner, Mrs. Wilson.” Dosia imagined him cheeringly +cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, carrying the +children from place to place as she had once seen him +carry that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago. +</p> +<p> +A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, +carrying her to the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid +rehabilitation of the strong, except in that one moment +of denial when he had risen by the might of his manhood +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322'></a>322</span> +in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues +of his weakness could be his—yet perhaps, in the +sight of the God Who pities, no such small offering, +after all! +</p> +<p> +“Dosia, you didn’t really <em>care</em> for him!” +</p> +<p> +She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyes—an +enigmatic answer which Billy could not read. He sat beside +her, smoothing her dress furtively, until she got up, +and, whispering, “I must go,” left the room, unconscious +of Girard’s following gaze. +</p> +<p> +“I think we’d better be getting back,” said the latter +suddenly, in an odd voice, rising in the middle of one of +Justin’s sentences as Billy came straying in to join the +group. +</p> +<p> +Lois’ heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of +live bait and reminiscences would be more than she could +stand. +</p> +<p> +“You need some rest,” she said gratefully. “You have +been tired out in our service.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I’m not tired at all,” he returned shortly. Her +work seemed to catch his eye for the first time, in a desire +to change the subject. “What are you making?” +</p> +<p> +“A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt +left out—he’s of a very jealous disposition,” she went on +abstractedly. “Are you of a jealous disposition, Mr. +Girard?” +</p> +<p> +“I!” He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed +to taking account of his own attributes, and +apparently pondered the question as if for the first time. +When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt decision: +“Yes, I am.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323'></a>323</span> +</p> +<p> +“Don’t look so like a pirate,” said young Billy, giving +him a thump on the back that sent them both out of the +house, laughing, when Lois rose and went over to Justin’s +side. +</p> +<p> +Husband and wife were at last alone. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324'></a>324</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</h2> +<p> +In the days that followed, Justin, going away in the +morning very early with a set face, coming home +very late in the evening with that set face still, +hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia. Some +tremulous change had affected Dosia; her eyelashes were +often mysteriously wet, though no one saw her weep. +</p> +<p> +“Justin has so much on his mind.” Lois kept repeating +the words over and over, as if she found in them something +by which to hold fast. Rich in beauty as she was, +full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and the +pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have +no eyes, no thought for her. That one murmured sentence +in the hallway was all her food to live on—his only personal +recognition of her. +</p> +<p> +On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his +plans to her with a freedom of confidence unknown before, +a confidence which seemed to presuppose her oneness of +interest with him. He had talked exhaustively about everything +but those few days’ absence; that was a sore that +she must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. +She had striven very hard not to show when she didn’t +understand, taking her cues for assent or dissent as he +evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, as it +seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The +only time when she broke in on her own account was when +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325'></a>325</span> +he had told her about Cater, and the defective bars, and +Leverich’s ultimatum. Here was an issue that she could +comprehend; here her woman’s instinct rang true. A man +may juggle with that fluctuating line where sharp practice +and honest shrewdness meet, so that he fails to see +where one begins and another ends; but a woman of Lois’ +caliber <em>knows</em>. Her “Justin, you wouldn’t do that; you +wouldn’t tell!” met with his quick response: “No, I +couldn’t.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, I know that, I know that! I’m glad, whatever +comes, that you couldn’t do it. I’d rather be a hundred +times poorer than we are! Aren’t you glad that you +couldn’t do it?” +</p> +<p> +“No; I think I’m rather sorry,” said Justin, with a +half-smile. The peculiar sharpness of the thought that it +was between Cater and Leverich—his friends, Heaven save +the mark! that he was being pushed toward ruin, had not +lost any of its edge. +</p> +<p> +There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater’s +mind toward Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration +and tenderness such as an older man who has been +along a hard road may feel toward another who has come +along the same way. Cater’s kind, unobtrusive comradeship, +the fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had +seemed to be one of the factors of support, of honesty, of +commercial righteousness. +</p> +<p> +Justin was surprised to find out how much the morning +greeting with Cater, or the occasional lunch-hour together, +had meant to him. Cater and he had mutually +understood a great many things. Cater had done nothing +wrong now, except to pull the foothold from under his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326'></a>326</span> +friend’s feet. It was not men who were known to be bad +who hurt you when they were dishonest; it was the <em>good</em> +men who slid over that dividing-line, with apparent unconsciousness +that they were on that other, shaming side. +To break an unwritten bond is perhaps worse than to +break one printed and scheduled, because it presupposes +a greater faith and trust. Justin could smile proudly at +Leverich, but he couldn’t smile when he thought of Cater—it +weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who +had been his friend. +</p> +<p> +“I am glad that you couldn’t do it anyway!” said Lois. +“It wouldn’t have been you if you had! Can’t you take a +rest now, dear, when <em>you</em> look so ill? No, no; I didn’t mean +that—of course you can’t!” +</p> +<p> +“A <em>rest!</em>” He rose and walked up and down the room. +“Lois, do you know that, in some way, I’ve got to get that +money before the thirteenth? Those days in Chicago—at +the worst time! It makes me wild to think of the time I’ve +lost. I’m looking out for a partner who will buy out Leverich +and Martin, and we’ve got a chance yet—I’ll swear we +have! But Lewiston’s note has got to be paid first; then I +can take time to breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston +from whom we might have borrowed the money, if I had +only been here. If we get that we can hold over; if we +don’t we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewiston +<em>trusted</em> me. I’ve been to several places to-day to men that +would be willing enough to lend the money if they didn’t +know I needed it.” +</p> +<p> +“George Sutton?” hazarded Lois. +</p> +<p> +Justin’s lips curved bitterly. “Oh, he’s a cur. He had +some money invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327'></a>327</span> +and drew it all out afterwards! And, after all, I went to +him to-day, like a fool!” +</p> +<p> +“Can’t you go to Eugene Larue?” +</p> +<p> +“No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he +didn’t think the security enough. If he thought so then, +it would be worse than useless now.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Girard?” +</p> +<p> +“There’s no use telling things to him, he hasn’t any +money.” Justin turned a dim eye on her. “I tell you, Lois, +I haven’t left a stone unturned so far, that I could get at. +If we could only sell the island! Girard’s looking it up for +me; there may be a chance of that. There are lots of +chances to be thought out. I don’t even know how we +keep running, but we do. Harker’s a trump! If I can hold +up my end, we’ll be all right.” +</p> +<p> +“Then go to bed now,” said Lois, with a quick dread +that gave her courage. “And you must have something +to eat first—and to drink, too. Come, Justin! Do as I +say.” Her voice had a new firmness in it which he unconsciously +obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in +every limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her +one darling comfort, the source from which she drew a +new love as the child drew its life from her. It was the first +time in all her married life that she had borne the burden +of her husband’s care, a burden from which she must seek +no solace from him. Yet the thought of him was in itself +solace—her faith in him so strong that she simply knew +he must succeed. A king of men! If only he did not look +so badly! +</p> +<p> +She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping +him well fed, and ordering everything minutely for his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328'></a>328</span> +comfort when he came home, aided and abetted by Dosia. +The two women worked as with one thought between them, +as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, +with fond and minute care. Every detail, from the time he +went away in the morning, stooping slightly under the +weight of something mysterious and unseen, was ordered +with reference to his homecoming at night—the husband +and father on whose strength all this helpless little family +hung for their own sustenance. The children were shown +him at their best, and whisked away the moment they got +troublesome. +</p> +<p> +Lois dressed herself in the colors he had liked. The +cloth was laid immaculately for dinner, although the maid +had gone and had not been replaced, and dainty dishes +for him were concocted with delicate care—the more care, +that every penny had to be counted; when Justin took out +that lean pocket-book to give her money, Lois winced. If +he seemed to relish anything he ate, she and Dosia looked +at each other with covert triumph. +</p> +<p> +Everything that was done for him had to be done +covertly, it was found; he disliked any manifestation of +undue attention to his wants. Sometimes he was terribly +irritable and unjust, and at others almost heartbreakingly +gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the +doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home +and rest—a futile prescription which he treated with +scorn. Rest! He knew very well that it was not rest that +he needed, but money—money, money, the elixir of life! +He looked drawn and haggard and old, despite his nervous +energy, but a sufficient quantity of that magic metal +would smooth out those premature wrinkles, and round out +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329'></a>329</span> +those hollow checks, and give a cheerful brightness to his +eye, and take ten years from his age. +</p> +<p> +Both women came to know the days when the prospects +for selling the island looked well or ill, with those telegrams +of Girard’s. Lois poured out her heart about him to Dosia, +her minute anxieties and fears. +</p> +<p> +William came around several times to see Dosia—his +visit almost invariably followed by one from Mrs. Snow, +to see if her William were there. For the rest, there were +few callers. +</p> +<p> +It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, +as Lois could see at once, revived and encouraged, though +still abstracted. He had an invitation to take a ride in the +doctor’s motor, the doctor being a man who, when the +hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented himself +for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless +and unholy speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure +on his nerves, and came to the renewed sanity of a wind-swept +brain when every idea had been rushed out of it. +</p> +<p> +Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was +glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught +him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple +of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. +It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she +had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something +wrong with her appearance? She looked anxiously in +the glass, and was annoyed to find that the white fichu, +open at the throat, was not on quite straight, and her +hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there +were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look +nice— Yet it might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330'></a>330</span> +something else was wrong—that he had bad news which +he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again on +some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat +down, to get the baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried +to drive the thought from her. Yet, as she sat there rocking +gently, the thought still came back to her, oddly, +puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The +smoke of his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his +presence. +</p> +<p> +Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room +in clumsy fashion, for fear of waking the baby, in his +quest for a handkerchief in a chiffonier drawer. After +finding it, he stopped for a moment in front of her, with +that odd, arrested expression once more. +</p> +<p> +“You don’t mind my going out to-night and leaving +you?” he murmured. “The doctor ought to have asked +<em>you</em> to go instead; you need it more than I.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no, no!” she hastened to reassure. “I don’t mind +at all, really!” Her eyes gazed up at him limpidly clear, +and emptied of self. “I have to run up and down stairs so +many times to baby now that I couldn’t go, no matter how +much I was asked to. I’m only glad that you will have +the distraction—you need it. I hope you’ll have a lovely +time.” +</p> +<p> +She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a +moment or two arose and laid the sleeping child down in his +crib. From across the hall she could hear Redge and +Zaidee prattling to each other from their beds with an +elfish glee that began to have long waits between its outbursts. +</p> +<p> +In the dim light she went about the room, picking up +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331'></a>331</span> +toys and little discarded garments left by the children, +folding the clothes away, her tall, graceful figure, in the +large curves of its repeated bending and straightening, +seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of +mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was +hanging up a tiny cloak in the half-gloom of her closet, +when she heard her husband’s step once more stealing into +the room, and the next moment saw him beside her. +</p> +<p> +“What’s the matter?” she asked, with quick premonition. +</p> +<p> +“Nothing, nothing at all; we haven’t started yet.” He +put one arm around her, and with the other lifted her +face up toward his. “I only came back to tell you—“His +voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes +that were bent on hers. “I can’t talk. I can’t be as I +ought to be, Lois, until all this is over—but—I don’t +know what’s getting into me lately, you look so beautiful +to me that I can’t take my eyes off you! I went around all +to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it was +time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I +spend away from my lovely wife.”% +</p> +<p> +Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so +much more blessed than our easily imagined bliss that we +can only hide our eyes from it at first, like those of old, +when in some humble and unthought-of place they were +visited by angels. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332'></a>332</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</h2> +<p> +Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at +the house, after an absence of ten days. Dosia +had gone to bed unusually early, but she could +not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately—the +more tired she was the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her +brain; it was like trying to sleep in a white glare in which +all sorts of trivial things became unnaturally distinct. So +many wakeful nights had she passed that one seemed to +presuppose another, darkness brought, not a sense of rest, +but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there +staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that +the pitcher had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for +the day to bring her something that it never brought. +Lawson’s death—Girard—Billy, who was getting a little +troublesome lately—the dear little brothers far away, +mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going +through and through her mind. Her heart was wrung for +those two in the house, Justin and Lois; yet they had +each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and support +Dosia; they had had their day. Prayer but wakened her +further, wandering off in desultory thought. If she could +only sleep and forget! +</p> +<p> +To-night she heard Justin’s return from the automobile +ride; apparently the machine had broken down, but the +accident seemed only to have added to the zest. Lois was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333'></a>333</span> +still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard came—he +had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the +murmuring of the voices down-stairs—Girard’s sent the +blood leaping to her heart so fast that she pressed her +hands against it. For a moment his face seemed near, his +lips almost touched hers—her heart stopped before it went +on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an +unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see +him and hear him, and that she could not. Why, oh why, +had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She +was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment +that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing +and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. +She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind +glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was +beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of +him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in +its chains. She couldn’t get dressed and break in upon +their intimate conference—or it seemed as if she could +not. Besides, he would probably go very soon. But he did +not go! After a while she could lie there no longer. She +crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there +desolately on the top step, “in her long night-gown, white +as boughs of May,” with her little bare feet curled over +each other, and her hands clasping the balustrade against +which her cheek was pressed, watching and waiting for him +to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into large loose +curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent +to listen—and to listen—and to listen. +</p> +<p> +“I want to be there, too—I want to be there, too!” +she whispered, with quivering lips, in her voice the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334'></a>334</span> +sobbing catch of a very little child. “I want to be there, too. +They’re having it all—without me. And I want to be +there, too. They might have called me to come down, and +they didn’t.” They might have called her! All her passion, +all her philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one +desire. If she had only known at first that he was going +to stay so long, she would have dressed and gone down. +She could hardly bear it a moment longer. +</p> +<p> +After a while a door on the landing of the second story +below opened, and a little figure crept out—Zaidee. She +stood irresolute in the hall, looking down; then she looked +up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and climbed into her lap, +resting her little pigtailed head confidingly against Dosia’s +warm young shoulder. +</p> +<p> +“They woke me up,” she said placidly. “Did they woke +you up, too, Cousin Dosia?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia, hugging the child close. Some spell +was broken. +</p> +<p> +Zaidee listened. “Papa and mamma talking down-stairs, +oh, so-o-o-o late!” Zaidee gave a little wriggle of delight; +her eyes gleamed winkingly. “Redge doesn’t know, but I +do! Who is that with papa and mamma, Cousin Dosia? Oh, +I know! it’s the lovely man—that’s what Redge and me +calls him. I wish I was down-stairs, don’t you? Cousin +Dosia, don’t you wish you were down-stairs?” +</p> +<p> +“Yes,” said Dosia again. “Hush! some one is coming; +you’ll get sent to bed again.” This time it was Lois. Her +abstracted gaze seemed to take in the two on the upper +stairway as a matter of course. +</p> +<div><a name='i334' id='i334'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i016' id='i016'></a> +<img src="images/i334.jpg" alt="Sat desolately on the top step" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>Sat desolately on the top step</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335'></a>335</span></div> +<p> +“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said. “I thought I heard +some one talking.” She rested on the post below, looking +up. “I came to see if you’d take Zaidee in with you for +the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give Justin’s room +to Mr. Girard.” +</p> +<p> +“Is he going to stay?” asked Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Yes. It’s too late for him to disturb the Snows, and +he’s been traveling all day; he’s dreadfully tired. He +wanted to sleep on the sofa down-stairs, but I wouldn’t +let him.” She was carrying Zaidee, already half asleep +again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia’s +bed, while Dosia followed her. +</p> +<p> +“Did he sell the island?” asked Dosia. +</p> +<p> +Lois shook her head. “No. They may really sell it next +week, but not now— The woman who was surely going to +buy it—she’s withdrawn; she’s bought a steam-yacht instead. +But Mr. Girard says he has hopes of another purchaser +next week. Only that will be too late to save the +business. Of course he doesn’t know that, and Justin will +not tell him—he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, +when Justin came in from that ride he looked so well, and +now—” She covered her face with her hands, before recovering +herself. “It’s time you were both asleep.” +</p> +<p> +“Can’t I help you?” asked Dosia; but Lois only answered +indifferently, “No, it’s not necessary,” and went +around making arrangements, while Dosia, with Zaidee +nestling close to her, slept at last. +</p> +<p> +It was late the next morning before Girard came down. +Justin had had breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs +with the children, and Dosia, who had been tidying up +the place, was arranging some flowers in the vases when +he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, +imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336'></a>336</span> +was to be seen in this trim, neat, capable little figure, +clad in blue gingham, that made her throat very white, +her hair very fair. Something in Girard’s glance seemed +to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to +greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held +in his hand. +</p> +<p> +“Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has +stopped.” +</p> +<p> +“It’s half-past nine,” said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Half-past <em>nine!</em>” He looked at her in a sort of quick, +horrified arraignment. “What do you mean?” His eye +fell upon the clock, and conviction seemed to steal upon +him against his will. “Heavens and earth, why wasn’t I +called? On this morning of all others, when every moment’s +of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked +early.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the +rest,” apologized Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Needed the rest!” His tone was poignant; he looked +outraged, but his anger was entirely impersonal—there +was in it even a sort of boyish appeal to her, as if she must +feel it, too. +</p> +<p> +“You had better sit down and have some breakfast.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, <em>breakfast!</em>” His gesture deprecated her evident +intention. “Please don’t. Thank you very much, +but I don’t want any breakfast; I only want to get to +town.” +</p> +<p> +“There isn’t any train for twenty-five minutes, so you +might as well sit down and eat,” said Dosia firmly. “Come +out to this little table on the piazza.” She led the way to +the screened corner at the end, sweet with the honeysuckle +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337'></a>337</span> +that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him +sternly. “Do you take coffee?” +</p> +<p> +“Please don’t, please don’t cook me anything! I’d hate +to trouble you.” He seemed so distressed that she relented +a little. +</p> +<p> +“A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you’ll <em>have</em> to +take that.” +</p> +<p> +“Very well—if I must. Can’t I get the things myself?” +</p> +<p> +“No.” She ran away to get them for him, with some +new joy singing in her heart as she went backward and +forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a glass, a dish of +strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down herself +by the table afterwards as he ate and drank. He gave +her a sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color +surged in her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +“I’m not used to this,” he said simply. “What is that +dress you have on—silk?” +</p> +<p> +“No, it’s cotton; do you like it?” +</p> +<p> +“<em>Very</em> much. Oh, please don’t get up—Zaidee wasn’t +calling you. I won’t eat another mouthful unless you stay +just where you are—please!” +</p> +<p> +“Well!” said Dosia, with laughing pleasure. +</p> +<p> +“Besides, I’ve been wanting to consult you about the +Alexanders,” he went on, leaning across the table toward +her, intimately. “It’s so beautiful to me to see them together +that to feel that they’re in trouble distresses me +beyond words. You’re so near to them both I thought that +perhaps—— Do you know anything about the real state of +Mr. Alexander’s affairs?” +</p> +<p> +Dosia shook her head. “No; only that he is very much +worried over them.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338'></a>338</span> +</p> +<p> +“He wanted to sell the island; he sent me off on that +business lately. He’ll sell it some time, of course, but I +don’t know how complicating the delay is. He’s the kind +of man you can’t ask; you have to wait until he tells you. +You can’t <em>make</em> a person have confidence in you. Won’t you +please have some of these strawberries with me? Do!” +</p> +<p> +“No; you must eat them <em>all</em>,” said Dosia, with charming +authority, her arms before her on the table, elbow-sleeved, +white and dimpled, as she regarded him. He +seemed to take up all the corner, against the background +of the green honeysuckle in the fresh morning light. With +that smile upon his face, he seemed extraordinarily masculine +and absorbing, yet appealing, too, inviting of confidence. +</p> +<p> +Dosia felt carried out of herself by a sudden heady resolution—or, +rather, not a new resolution, but one that she +had had in mind for a long, long time, before, oh, before +she had even known who this man was. She had planned +over and over again how she was to say those words, and +now the time had come. She could not sit here with him +in this new, sweet friendliness without saying them. She had +imagined the scene in so many different ways! When she +had gone over it by herself, her cheeks had flushed, her +eyes had shone with the tears in them; the words as she +spoke them had gone deeply, convincingly, from heart to +heart—or perhaps, in an assumed, tremulous lightness, the +meaning in her impulse had shown all the clearer to one +who understood. For a year and a half the uttered thought +had been the climax to which her dreams had led; it would +have seemed a monstrous, impossible thing that it had not +been reached before. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339'></a>339</span> +</p> +<p> +She began now in a moment’s pause, only to find, +too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her +with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt +to make one uncomfortably crude and conscious in real +life. +</p> +<p> +“I want to thank you for being so kind to me the night +of that accident on the train coming up from the South.” +Poor Dosia instantly felt committed to a mistake. Her eyes +fell for a moment on his hand, as it lay upon the table, with +a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers had not +only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once +pillowed her cheek upon it, and knew that he had seen the +look; she continued in desperation, with still increasing +stiffness and formality: “I have always known, of course, +that it was you. You must pardon me for not thanking +you before.” +</p> +<p> +The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him +as if in remembrance of something that hurt. “Oh, pray +don’t mention it,” he said, with a formality that matched +hers. “It was nothing but what anyone would have done—little +enough, anyway.” +</p> +<p> +What happened afterwards she did not know, except that +in a few minutes he had gone. +</p> +<p> +She watched him go off down the path with that swift, +long, easy step; watched till the last vestige of the gray +suit was out of sight—he had a fashion of wearing gray!—before +clearing off the table. Then she went and sat on +the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with +the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet. Justin was +fond of flowers. +</p> +<p> +Much has been written about the power of the mind to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340'></a>340</span> +reproduce minute details of a scene that has served as the +setting for some great emotion; the pattern of a table-cover +or a rug, the flowers in a vase, the titles of the books, the +strain of music being played in the next room—all stand +out, separate and distinct, indelibly imprinted upon the +memory. There is another variety of the same phenomena, +seldom commented on, where an entirely unreal impression +of the scene as a whole is left on the mind by one or two +details. To Dosia, sitting there by the little plot of tulips, +the sun was the brilliant sun of July, and those scarlet +tulips a garden wide and far-reaching, an endless vista +of flowers, the blue sky an endless vault above her—high +noon and midsummer, with that sweet-scented warmth at +the busy heart of things, a circle of infinite life humming +in the low grasses, in the almost windless, hardly stirring +air. Warmth and color and life, at high noon, listening +close to the heart of things. +</p> +<p> +And Dosia! She had never supposed that any girl could +care for a man until he had shown that he cared for her—it +was the unmaidenly, impossible thing. And now—how +beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful smile trembled around +her lips. All that had gone before with other men suddenly +became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she +herself made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never +had anything more in her whole life, she had this—even +if she never had anything more. Yet what had she? Nothing +and less than nothing. If he had ever thought of her, if +he had ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand +trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by +his touch, had been a sign and a symbol to him of some +dearer trust and faith for him alone—if in some way, as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341'></a>341</span> +she dimly visioned it, the thought had once been his, it +had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and +yet—so unconquerably does the soul speak that, though +he might deny her attraction for him, she knew that she +had it. It was something to which he might never give way, +but it was unalterably there—as it was unalterably there +with her. All that year at home, when she believed she had +not been thinking of him, she really had been thinking of +him. We learn to know each other sometimes in long absences. +She began to perceive in him now a humility and +a pride strangely at variance with each other, and both +equally at variance with the bright assurance of his outer +manner. He gave to everyone; he would work early and +late for others, in his yearning sympathy and affection: +yet he himself, from the very intenseness of his desire for +it, stood aloof, and drew back from the insistence of any +claim for himself. They might meet a hundred times and +grow no closer; they might grow farther and farther +away. +</p> +<p> +Dosia felt that other women must have loved him—how +could they have helped it? She had a pang of sorrow for +them—for herself it made no difference. If she had pain +for all her life afterwards, she was glad at this moment that +he was worthy to be loved; she need never be ashamed of +loving him—he was “good.” The word seemed to contain +some beautiful comfort and uplifting. No matter what experience +he had passed through in his struggle with the +world, he had held some simple, honorable, <em>clean</em> quality +intact. The Dosia who must always have some heart-warm +dream to live by had it now; for all her life she could love +him, pray for him. She had always thought that to love +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342'></a>342</span> +was to be happy; now she was to love and be unhappy—yet +she would not have it otherwise. +</p> +<p> +So slight, so young, so lightly dealt with, Dosia had +the pathetically clear insight and the power that comes +to those who see, not themselves alone, their own desires +and hopes, but the universe in which they stand, and view +their acts and thoughts in relation to it. She must see +Truth, “and be glad, even if it hurt.” +</p> +<p> +The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed +in it. Whether she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness +and days of heartache afterwards, this joy of loving +was enough for her to-day—the joy of loving him. She +saw, in that lovely, brooding thought of him, what that +first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in +with it her knowledge of him now, to make the real man +far more imperfect, though far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved +her as she loved him, part of that for which she had always +sought love would have to be foregone—she could never +come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and +pour out to him all those hopes and fears, those struggles +and mistakes and trials and indignities, the shame and the +penitence that had been hers. She could never talk of Lawson—her +past must be forever unshriven and uncomforted. +Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she +could bare her heart in confession; these were the things +that touched him on the raw. He “hated the sound of +Lawson’s name.” How many times had George Sutton’s +face blotted out hers? If he knew <em>that</em>! She must forever +be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that +<em>she</em> could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that +it never can be truly one with the beloved, touched her with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343'></a>343</span> +its sadness, and then slipped away in the thought of him +now—not just the man who was to help and protect her +with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. +His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his +forehead—— She thought of him with the fond dream-passion +of the maiden, that is often the shyest thing on earth, +ready to veil itself and turn and elude and hide at the first +chance that it may be revealed. +</p> +<p> +“Dosia! Dosia, where are you?” +</p> +<p> +Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the +sky had grown gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the +trouble, all the stress of the world, seemed to encompass +her with that tone in the voice of Lois. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344'></a>344</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</h2> +<p> +“Justin has come home ill, he was taken with a +chill as soon as he got to town; he drove back in +a carriage from the station. I want you to telephone +for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can.” +Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to +pick up the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs +into place, as one who mechanically attends to the usual +duties of routine, no matter what may be happening. +“And, Dosia!” she arrested the girl as she was disappearing, +“I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about +what we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. +And see about the children. They’re in the nursery now, +but I’ll send them down; they had better play outdoors, +where he won’t hear them.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, yes; I’ll attend to everything,” affirmed Dosia +hurriedly, while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to +stop work and come home because he is not well argues at +once the most serious need for the act. It is the public crossing +of the danger zone. +</p> +<p> +With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering +knowledge of something unnatural about Lois, not +to be explained by the fact of Justin’s illness. There was +something newly impassioned in the duskiness of her eyes, +in the fullness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement +of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345'></a>345</span> +hidden fiery force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, +even while she spoke of and handled the things of +every-day life. She looked at the commonplace surroundings, +at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only Justin. +When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken +eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children +to make him smile also; patting him, talking of the +summer, when they would go off together—anything to +make him forget, even though the effort left her breathless +afterwards. When she went out of the room and came back +again, she found him still watching the place where she +had been, with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would +not go to bed, but lay on the outside of it in his dressing-gown, +so that he might get ready the more quickly to go +down-town again if the doctor “fixed him up,” though +now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones. +</p> +<p> +There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the +morning, which might have been the doctor, but which +turned out surprisingly to be Mr. Angevin L. Cater. +</p> +<p> +“I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning +and had gone home, and as I had to come out this way +on business, I thought I’d just drop in and see if there +was anything I could do for him in town,” he stated to +Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“I’ll find out,” said Dosia, and came down in a moment +with the word that Justin would like to see the visitor. +</p> +<p> +Cater himself had grown extraordinarily lean and yellow. +The fact that his clothes were new and of a fashionable cut +seemed only to make him the more grotesque. He looked +oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile of greeting appeared +to have shrunk also—something had gone out of it. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346'></a>346</span> +</p> +<p> +“Well, Cater, you find me down,” said Justin, with glittering, +cold cheerfulness. +</p> +<p> +“I hope not for long,” said the visitor. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no; but, when I get up, you won’t see me going +past much longer; I’ll soon be out of the old place. I guess +the game is up, as far as I’m concerned. Your end is ahead.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Alexander,” began Cater, clearing his throat and +bending earnestly toward Justin, who, with the folds of +his blue dressing-gown around him, had the unnatural surroundings +of the flowered-chintz-covered bedroom furniture, +and Lois’ swinging-glassed, mahogany dressing-table with +its silver appointments. The room had already the cleared-up +neatness with which one prepares for illness, with everything +irrelevant put away. A cluster of white tulips was +in a thin glass vase on the mantel; the shades were drawn +to an inch, so that an unglaring yet dimly cheerful light +came through them; on the little mahogany stand by Cater +there was a glass of water and a watch, ticking face upward. +Cater’s elbow jostled into the light table as he turned, and +he steadied it before bracing himself to go on. “I hope you +ain’t going to hold it up against me that I had to make +a different business deal from what we proposed; I’ve +been thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasn’t any +written agreement, you know.” +</p> +<p> +“No, there was no written agreement,” assented Justin; +“there was nothing to bind you.” +</p> +<p> +“That’s what I said to myself. If there had been, I’d ’a’ +stuck to it, of course. But a man’s got to do the best he can +for himself in this world.” +</p> +<p> +“Has he?” asked the sick man, with an enigmatic questioning +smile. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347'></a>347</span> +</p> +<p> +“I’d be mighty sorry to have anything come between us. +I reckon I took a shine to you the first day I met up with +you,” continued Cater helplessly. “I’d be mighty sorry to +think we weren’t friends.” +</p> +<p> +Justin’s brilliant eyes surveyed him serenely. Something +sadly humorous, yet noble and imposing, seemed to emanate +from his presence, weak and a failure though he was. “I +can be friends with you, but you can’t be friends with me, +Cater; it isn’t in you to know how,” he said. “Good-by.” +</p> +<p> +“Well, good-by,” said the other, rising, his long, angular +figure knocking awkwardly against chairs and tables +as he went out, leaving Justin lying there alone, with his +head throbbing horribly. Yet, strangely enough, in spite +of it, his mind felt luminously clear, in that a certain power +seemed to have come to him—a power of correlating all the +events of the past eighteen months and placing them in +their relative sequence. A certain faith—the candid, boyish, +unquestioning faith in the adequacy of his knowledge of +those whom he had called his friends—was gone; the face +of Leverich came to him, brutal in its unveiled cupidity, +showing what other men felt but concealed, yet his own +faith in honor and honesty remained, stronger and higher +than ever before. Nothing, he knew, could take it from +him; it was a faith that he had won from the battle with +his own soul. If other so-called material things had to go, +then they had to—he couldn’t pay the price, for one! He +saw now that he had been foredoomed from the start. Men +who ventured on a capital controlled by others, hadn’t any +chance of free movement. +</p> +<p> +By to-morrow night that note of Lewiston’s would be +protested, and then—the burning pain of failure gripped +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348'></a>348</span> +him in its racking clutches once more, though he strove +to fight it off. He would have to get well quickly, so as +to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to get +bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were +successful were sought for, but men of his age who were +not had a pretty hard row to hoe. +</p> +<p> +Lois was long gone—probably she was with the baby. +He missed his handkerchief, and rose and went over, with a +swaying unsteadiness, to his chiffonier drawer in the farther +corner to get one. A pistol lying there in its leather case, as +it had done any time this five years, for a reserve protection +against burglars, caught his eyes. He took it out of its +case, examining the little weapon carefully, with his finger +on the trigger, half cocking it, to see if it needed oil. It +was a pretty little toy. Suddenly, as he held it there, leaning +against the chiffonier, his thin white face with its deep +black shadows under the eyes reflected by the high, narrow +glass, the four walls faded away from him, with their familiar +objects; his face gleamed whiter and whiter; the +shadows grew blacker; only his eyes stared—— +</p> +<p> +A room, noticed once a year and a half ago, came before +him now with a creeping, all-possessing distinctness—that +loathsome, dreadful room (long since renovated) which, +with its unmentionable suggestion of horror, had held him +spellbound on that morning when he had begun his career +at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. +He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul +room, with its damp, mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened +on that hideous sofa to which he was drawn—drawn +a little nearer and a little nearer; the thing in his hand—did +it move itself? Cold to his touch it moved—— +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349'></a>349</span> +</p> +<p> +The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, +glided up to him. She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; +her lips refused to speak. +</p> +<p> +“Why, you needn’t have been afraid, dear,” he said at +once, looking at her with a gentle surprise. “I’m not a +coward, to go and leave you <em>that</em> way. You need never be +afraid of that, Lois.” +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not +have told what made the frantic, overmastering fear, under +the impulse of which she had suddenly thrown the baby +down on the bed and fled to Justin—what strange force of +thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her +there. +</p> +<p> +She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his +wants and getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, +and then knelt down beside him where he lay, putting her +arms around him. +</p> +<p> +“You oughtn’t to be doing this for me; I ought to be +taking care of <em>you</em>,” he said, with a tender self-reproach +that seemed to come from a new, hitherto unknown Justin, +who watched her face to see if it showed fatigue, and +counted the steps she took for him. +</p> +<p> +The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and +came again later. The last time he looked grave, ordered +complete quiet, and left sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought +on by overwork, had evidently taken a disregarded hold +some time before, and must be reckoned with now. What +Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all +things, freedom from care. Freedom from care! +</p> +<p> +Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. +An impression of Justin as of something noble and firm +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350'></a>350</span> +seemed to emanate from the room where he lay and fill the +house; in his complete abdication, he dominated as never +before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar +poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done +for him; it made one honorable to serve him. +</p> +<p> +The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter +of seven, when Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and +Redge to bed, came into Lois’ room, and found her with +crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At Dosia’s +entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw +that she was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she +flared out passionately as she was crossing the room, as if +in answer to some implied criticism: +</p> +<p> +“I don’t care what you say—I don’t care what anybody +says. I can’t stand it any longer, when it’s <em>killing</em> +him! He <em>can’t</em> rest unless he has that money. Am I to just +sit down and let my husband die, when he’s in such trouble +as this? Is <em>that</em> all I can do? Why, whose trouble is it? +Mine as well as his! If it’s his responsibility, it’s mine, too—mine +as well as his!” +</p> +<p> +She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the +table, and was unconscious that it bled. “If there’s nobody +else to get that money for him, <em>I’ll</em> rise up and get it. +He’s stood alone long enough—long enough! He says +there is no help left, but he forgets that there’s his wife!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Lois,” said Dosia, half weeping. “Oh, Lois, what +can <em>you</em> do? There, you’ve waked the baby—he’s crying.” +</p> +<p> +“Get me the waist to this skirt and my walking-jacket. +No, give me the baby first; he’s hungry.” +</p> +<p> +She spoke collectedly, bending over the child as she held +him to her, and straightening the folds of the little +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351'></a>351</span> +garments. “There, there, dear little heart, dear little heart, +mother’s comfort—oh, my comfort, my blessing! Get my +things out of the closet now, Dosia, and my gloves from +that drawer, the top one. Oh, and bring me baby’s cloak +and cap, too. I forgot that I couldn’t leave him. I must +take him with me.” She had sunk her voice to a low murmur, +so as not to disturb the child. +</p> +<p> +“Where are you going?” asked Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“To Eugene Larue.” +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Larue!” +</p> +<p> +“Yes. He’ll let me have the money—he’ll understand. +He wouldn’t let Justin have it, but he’ll give it to me—if +I’m not too proud to ask for it; and I’m not too proud.” +She spoke in a tone the more thrilling for its enforced +calm. “There are things a man will do for a woman, when +he won’t for a man because then he has to be businesslike; +but he doesn’t have to be businesslike to a woman—he can +lend to her just because she needs it.” +</p> +<p> +“Lois!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, there’s many a woman—like me—who always +knows, even though she never acts on the knowledge, +that there is some man she could go to for help, and get +it, just because she was <em>herself</em>—a woman and in trouble—just +for that! Dosia, if I go to Eugene Larue myself +in trouble—<em>such</em> trouble——” +</p> +<p> +“But he’s out at Collingswood!” said Dosia, bewildered. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, +it connects at Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an +hour to get to the place; I’ve looked it up in the time-table. +I’ll be back here again by ten o’clock. I——” She stopped +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352'></a>352</span> +with a sudden intense motion of listening, then put the +child from her and ran across the hall to the opposite +room. +</p> +<p> +When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: +“Justin’s gone to sleep now. The doctor says he will be +under the influence of the anodynes until morning. Mrs. +Bently is in there—I sent for her; she says she’ll stay +until I get back.” Mrs. Bently was a woman of the plainer +class, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. “If the +children wake up they won’t be afraid with her; but you’ll +be here, anyway.” +</p> +<p> +“Leave the baby with me,” implored Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“No, I can’t—suppose I were detained? <em>Then</em> I’d go +crazy! He won’t be any bother, he’s so little and so light.” +</p> +<p> +“Very well, then; I’ll go, too,” stated Dosia in desperation. +“I am not needed here. You must have some one +with you if you have baby! Let me go, Lois! You <em>must!</em>” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, very well, if you like,” responded Lois indifferently. +But that the suggestion was an unconscious relief +to her she showed the next moment, as she gave some +directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries and some +biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the +baby if it grew chilly. +</p> +<p> +The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be +lighted and the gas turned down, and the new maid impressed +with the fact that they would be back at a little +after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After +Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin +as he slept—his head thrown forward a little on the pillow, +his right hand clasped, and his knees bent as one +supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois stooped +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_353'></a>353</span> +over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who +sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit. +</p> +<p> +Then the two women walked down the street toward the +station, Lois absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia +distracted, confused, half assenting and half dissenting to +the expedition. +</p> +<p> +“Are you sure Mr. Larue will be at Collingswood?” +she asked anxiously. +</p> +<p> +“Justin saw him Saturday. He said he was going out +there then for the summer.” +</p> +<p> +So far it would be all right, then. They had passed the +Snows’ house, and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of +life there; she hesitated, and then went on. As they got +beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked back, and saw +Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza. +</p> +<p> +“I’ll catch up to you in a moment,” she said to Lois, +and ran back quickly. +</p> +<p> +“Miss Bertha!” +</p> +<p> +“Why, Dosia, my dear, I didn’t see you; don’t speak +loud!” Miss Bertha’s face, her whispering lips, her hands, +were trembling with excitement. “We’ve been under quite +a strain, but it’s all over now—I’m sure I can tell <em>you</em>. +Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr. +Sutton has just proposed to Ada—in the sitting-room. +We left them the parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. +Mother’s white shawl is in there, and I haven’t been +able to get it.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh!” said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance +of the fact. “Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be +in later?” +</p> +<p> +“No, not until to-morrow night,” said Miss Bertha as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_354'></a>354</span> +blankly, but Dosia had already gone on. She did not +know whether she were relieved or sorry that Girard +was not there. She did not know what she had meant to +say to him, but it had seemed as if she <em>must</em> see him. +She caught up to Lois and the baby in a few steps, and +drew back into the station as Billy passed it. She had +felt anxiously as if some one ought to know where they +were going, but not Billy—Billy, who was always now +either too melancholy or too joyous, as she rebuffed or +relented. +</p> +<p> +Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit +seemed to be wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as +the darkness that was gathering around them. Only, when +they were at last in the train, she threw back her veil and +smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief in the +smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost +roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness +of heart to Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“He will lend me the money,” said Lois, with a grateful, +touching confidence that seemed to shut out every conventional, +every worldly suggestion, and to breathe only of her +need and the willingness of a friend to help—not alone for +the need’s sake, but for hers. +</p> +<p> +Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see +him; his bearded lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, +piercing eyes, were not attractive to her. The whole thing +was very bewildering. +</p> +<p> +It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, +where they changed cars for the little branch road that +went past Collingswood—a signal station, as the conductor +who punched their tickets impressed on Lois. Haledon +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_355'></a>355</span> +itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of +people on the platform continually coming and going +under the electric lights. As Lois and Dosia waited for +their train, an automobile dashed up, and a man and a +woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took +their place among those who were waiting for the westbound +express. The woman, large and elegantly gowned, +had something familiar in her outline as she turned to +her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair +mustache—the man who lately had been seen everywhere +with Mrs. Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia +shrank back into the shadow. The light struck full athwart +the large, full-blown face of Myra as she turned to the +man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly cognizant, +smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar +between his teeth. +</p> +<p> +Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shame—she +had seen something that should have been hidden in darkness. +They were going off together. All those whispers +about Mrs. Leverich had been true. +</p> +<p> +There were only a few people in the shaky, rattling little +car when Lois and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment +later, down a lonely road with wooded hills sloping +to the track on one side and a wooded brook on the other. +The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the +odor of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and +the baby, rolled in his long cloak, slept all the way. +It was but seven miles to Collingswood, yet the time +seemed longer than all the rest of the journey before they +were finally dumped out at the little empty station with +the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_356'></a>356</span> +the ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran +after him. +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Larue’s place is near here, isn’t it?” she called. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, over there to the right,” said the youth, pointing +down the board walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, +“about a quarter of a mile down. You’ll know when you +come to the gates. They’re big iron ones.” +</p> +<p> +“Isn’t there any way of riding?” +</p> +<p> +“I guess not,” said the youth, and disappeared into the +woods on a bicycle. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, it will be only a step,” said Lois, starting off +in the direction indicated, followed perforce by Dosia with +the hand-bag, both walking in silence. +</p> +<p> +The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact +daylight possibility, had been growing gradually a thing +of the dark, unknown, fantastic. A faint remnant of the +fading light remained in the west, vanishing as they looked +at it. Above the treetops a pale moon hung high; there +seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that +iron track curved out of sight. +</p> +<p> +The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with +that strangely eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big +iron gates were reached at last, showing a long winding +drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue had built a +house for his bride, living in it these summers when she +was away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess +tacitly before the world that he was unable to make his +wife care for him—a darkened, desolate, lonely life, as +dark and as desolate as this house seemed now. An undefined +dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently: +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_357'></a>357</span> +</p> +<p> +“The walk has not really been very long. We’ll probably +drive back. It’s odd that there are no lights, but +perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah, there’s a light!” +</p> +<p> +Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung +on the cornice above—it was the moon and not a lamp that +had made it. They ascended the piazza steps; there was no +one there. +</p> +<p> +“There is a knocker at the front door,” said Lois. She +pounded, and the noise vibrated terrifyingly through the +stillness. At the same instant a scraping on the gravel walk +behind them made them turn. It was the boy on the +bicycle, who, having sped back to them, was wheeling +around at the moment that he might lose no impetus in +retracing his way, while he leaned over to call: +</p> +<p> +“Mr. Larue ain’t there. The woman who closed up the +house told me he had a cable from his wife, and he sailed +for Europe this afternoon. She says, do you want the +key?” +</p> +<p> +“No,” said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared. +</p> +<p> +“I wish he had waited until we could have asked him +some questions,” said Dosia, vexed. “Don’t let’s stay +here; it’s too dark and too dreadfully lonely under these +trees. We had better get back to the station and wait for +the train.” +</p> +<p> +“I suppose so,” said Lois drearily. This, then, was the +end of her exaltation—for this she had passionately nerved +herself! There was to be neither the warmth of instant +comprehension of her errand, nor the frank giving of aid +when necessity had been pleaded; there was nothing. She +shifted the baby over to the other shoulder, and they +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_358'></a>358</span> +retraced their way, which now seemed familiar and short. +There was, at any rate, a light on a tall pole in front of +the little station, although the station itself was deserted; +they seated themselves on the bench under it to wait. The +train was not scheduled for nearly an hour yet. The watch +that Lois carried showed that it was a quarter to nine. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, if I could only fly back!” she groaned. “I don’t +see how I can wait—I don’t see how I can wait! Oh, why +did I come?” +</p> +<p> +“Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of,” +said Dosia, with the terribly self-accusing feeling now that +she ought to have prevented the expedition at the beginning. +She got up to go into the little box of a house, in +search of a time-table. As she passed the tall post that +held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper, and read aloud +the words written on it below the date: +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p>NOTICE</p> +<p> </p> +<p>NO TRAINS WILL RUN ON THIS ROAD TO-NIGHT</p> +<p>AFTER 8.30 P.M., ON ACCOUNT OF REPAIRS</p> +</div> +<p> +Dosia and Lois looked at each other with the blankness +of despair—the frantic, forlornly heroic impulse, uncalculating +of circumstances, began to show itself in all its +piteous woman-folly. +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_359'></a>359</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN</h2> +<p> +Only fifty miles from a great city, the little station +seemed like the typical lodge in a wilderness; +as far as one could see up or down the +track, on either side were wooded hills. A vast silence +seemed to be gathering from unseen fastnesses, to halt in +this spot. +</p> +<p> +There were no houses and no light to be seen anywhere, +except that one swinging on the pole above, and +the moon which was just rising. It was, in fact, one of +those places which consist of the far, back-lying acres of +the great country-owners, and which seem to the casual +traveler forgotten or unknown in their extent and apparently +primitive condition. The other railroad, six or +seven miles away, went past the country towns and the +façaded mansions and the conventional horticultural +grounds of the possessors of these uncultivated tracts of +woodland. +</p> +<p> +To the women sitting on the bench, wrapped around +by the loneliness and the intense stillness of the oncoming +night, the whole expedition appeared at last unveiled +in all its grim betrayal. While Lois had been exaltedly +imaginative, had resolved so desperately, had +acted so daringly, there had never been, from the inception +of the scheme, any chance that it could succeed. For the +first time since Lois had left home, a wild seething anxiety +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360'></a>360</span> +for Justin possessed her. How could she have left him? +She must go back to him at once! +</p> +<p> +“Oh, Dosia, we must get home again; we must get +home!” she cried, starting up so vehemently that the +baby in her arms screamed, startled, and Lois walked up +and down distractedly hushing him, and then, as he still +wailed, sat down once more and bared her white bosom +to quiet him, talking the while in a low tone: “We will +have to get back; Dosia, we must start at once.” +</p> +<p> +“We will have to walk to Haledon,” said Dosia. +</p> +<p> +“Yes, yes. Perhaps we may come to some farmhouse +where they will let us have a wagon, or one may pass us +on the way and give us a lift. It is seven miles to Haledon—that +isn’t very far! I often walked five miles with Justin +before I was married, and a mile or two more is nothing. +There are plenty of trains from Haledon.” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, we can do it easily enough,” said Dosia, though +her heart was as lead within her breast. “You had better +eat some of these biscuits before we start,” she advised, +taking them out of the bag; and Lois munched them +obediently, and drank some tepid water from a pitcher +which Dosia had found inside. As she put it back again in +its place, she slipped to the side of the platform and looked +down the moon-filled narrow valley. +</p> +<p> +Through all this journey Dosia had carried double +thoughts; her voice called where none might hear. It spoke +to far distances now as she whispered, with hands outspread: +</p> +<p> +“Oh, <em>why</em> weren’t you in when I went for you? Why +didn’t you come and take care of us, when I needed you +so much? Why did you let us go off this way? You might +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_361'></a>361</span> +have known! Why <em>don’t</em> you come and take care of us? +There’s no one to take care of us but you! <em>You</em> could!” +A dry sob stopped the words—the deep, inherent cry of +womankind to man for help, for succor. She stooped over +and picked up an oak-leaf that had lain on the ground +since the winter, and pressed it to her bosom, and sent it +fluttering off on a gust of wind down the incline, as if it +could indeed take her message with it, before she went back +to Lois. +</p> +<p> +After some hesitation as to the path,—one led across +the rails from where they were sitting,—they finally took +that behind the station, which broadened out into a road +that lay along the wooded slope above, from which they +could look down at intervals and see the track below. One +side of that road was bordered by a high wire fencing +inclosing pieces of woodland, sometimes so thick as to be +impenetrable, while along other stretches there would be +glimpsed through the trees some farther open field. To +the right toward the railway, there were only woods and +no fencing. +</p> +<p> +The two walked off briskly at first, but the road was +of a heavy, loose, shelving soil in which the foot sank at +each step; the grass at the edge was wet with dew and +intersected by the ridged, branching roots of trees; the +pace grew, perforce, slower and slower still. They took +turns in carrying the baby, whose small bundled form +began to seem as if weighted with lead. +</p> +<p> +Far over on what must have been the other side of the +track, they occasionally saw the light of a house; at one +place there seemed to be a little hamlet, from the number +of lights. They were clearly on the wrong bank; they +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_362'></a>362</span> +should have crossed over at the station. The only house +they came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened +and charred with fire. There was only that endless line +of wire fencing along which they pushed forward painfully, +with dragging step; instead of passing any given +point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they +could never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, +and silence, and trees. Trees! They became nightmarishly +oppressive in those dark, solemn ranks and groups—those +silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath them; terror +lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the +trees, away into the open, with only the clear sky overhead! +If that road to the house of Eugene Larue had +seemed a part of infinity in the dimness of the unknown, +what was this? +</p> +<p> +They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosia’s +voice coaxing and cheering, and then got up to shake the +earth out of their shoes and struggle on once more—bending, +shivering, leaning against each other for support; +two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection +with other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the +universe, as women do toil, apparently futile of result. +</p> +<p> +Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the +side of the road, clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile +shot by—a cheerful monster that spoke of life in +towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation behind it. Why +hadn’t they seen it before? Why hadn’t they tried to hail +it when they <em>did</em> see? To have had such a chance and lost it! +It seemed to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent +thought. Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably +by a group of men approaching with strange sounds—a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_363'></a>363</span> +group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when +Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still +jabbering, two bedraggled women and a baby were no +novelty to them. Then there were more long, high fencing, +and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and trees—and +trees— +</p> +<p> +“Do you suppose we’ll <em>ever</em> get out of here?” asked +Lois at last, dully. +</p> +<p> +“Why, of course; we can’t help getting out, if we keep +on,” said Dosia, in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone. +</p> +<p> +It was she who was helper and guide now. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave +him? How far do you think we have walked, Dosia?” +</p> +<p> +“It seems so endless, I can’t tell; but we must be nearly +at Haledon,” said Dosia. “Let’s sit down and rest awhile +here. Oh, Lois, Lois <em>dear</em>!” She had taken off her jacket +and spread it on the damp grass for them both to sit on, +huddled close together, and now pressed the older woman’s +head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child +in her young arms. “Oh, Lois, Lois!” +</p> +<p> +Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, +there came the murmur of the brook they had passed in +the train—so long since, it seemed! The moon hung higher +above now, pouring a flood of light down through the +arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with +its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. +Something in the utter relaxation of the attitude and +manner began to alarm the girl. +</p> +<p> +“Lois, we must go on,” she said, with an anxious note +in her voice. “Lois! You <em>mustn’t</em> give up. We can’t stay +here!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_364'></a>364</span> +</p> +<p> +“Yes, I know,” said Lois. She struggled to her feet, +and began to walk ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung +out her arms to the shadow-embroidered road over which +they had just passed. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, why <em>don’t</em> you come!” she whispered again intensely, +with passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching +up to Lois, took the child from her, and again they +stumbled on together, haltingly, to the accompaniment of +that far-off brook. +</p> +<p> +The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, +the walls of trees darker, closer together, though the soil +under foot grew firmer. They had to stop every few minutes +to rest. Lois saw ever before her the one objective point—a +dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out upon the +bed, dying, while she could not get there. Hope was crushed +out. Death and ruin—that was the end. +</p> +<p> +The end! There are paths one walks along in life that +seem only to end in the barrier of a stone wall, with “No +thoroughfare” written on it; there is no way beyond. Yet, +when one gets close to that insurmountable, impenetrable +barrier, how often there is seen to be some hitherto unnoticed +aperture, some little postern-gate by which one can +pass on into the highroad! +</p> +<p> +“Hark!” said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound +of a voice trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came +nearer, while the women stood terrified. The thing they had +both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the moonlight +brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with +a bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future +could compare with this one, that neared them with the +seconds, swaying unsteadily from side to side of the road, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_365'></a>365</span> +as the tipsy voice alternately muttered and roared the reiterated +words: +</p> +<p> + “For I have come from Pad-dy land,<br /> + The land—I do adore!”<br /> +</p> +<p> +They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of +the path, and he passed with his eyes on the ground, or he +must have seen—a blotched, dark-visaged, leering creature, +living in an insane world of his own. They waited until he +was far out of sight before creeping, all of a tremble, from +their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly +near—the pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one +saw it through the lights and shadows under the trees, capless +and coatless, with sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the +elbows, and head held forward. Suddenly the pace slackened, +stopped. +</p> +<p> +“Great <em>heavens</em>!” said the voice of Bailey Girard. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, it’s you, it’s you!” cried Dosia, running to him +with an ineffable, revealing gesture, a lovely motion of +her upflinging arms, a passion of joy in the face upraised +to his, that called forth an instantly flashing, all-embracing +light in his. +</p> +<p> +In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each +of an intimacy that went back of all words, back of all +action. The arms that upheld her gripped her close to him +as one who defends his own as he said tensely: +</p> +<p> +“That beast ahead, did he touch you?” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, no; he didn’t see us. We hid!” She tried to explain +in hurrying, disconnected sentences. “I’ve been longing +and <em>praying</em> for you to come! I tried to let you know before +we started, and you weren’t there. Lois was half crazy +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_366'></a>366</span> +about Justin. Come to her now! She wanted to see Mr. +Larue, and he was gone. We’ve walked from Collingswood; +we have the baby with us.” +</p> +<p> +“The <em>baby</em>!” +</p> +<p> +“Yes; she couldn’t leave him behind. Oh, it’s been so +terrible! If you had only known!” +</p> +<p> +“Oh, why didn’t I?” he groaned. “I ought to have +known—I <em>ought</em> to have known! I was in that motor that +must have passed you; it was just a chance that I got out +to walk.” They had reached the place where Lois sat, and +he bent over her tenderly. She smiled into his anxious eyes, +though her poor face was sunken and wan. +</p> +<p> +“I’m glad it’s you,” she whispered. “You’ll help me to +get home!” +</p> +<p> +“Dear Mrs. Alexander! I want to help you to more than +that. I want you to tell me everything.” He pressed her +hand, and stood looking irresolutely down the road. +</p> +<p> +“I could go to Haledon, and send back a carriage for +you; it’s three miles further on.” +</p> +<p> +“No, no, no! Don’t leave us!” the accents came in terror +from both. “We can walk with you. Only don’t leave us!” +</p> +<p> +“Very well; we’ll try it, then.” +</p> +<p> +He took the warm bundle that was the sleeping child +from Lois, saying, as she half demurred, “It’s all right; +I’ve carried ’em in the Spanish-American War in Cuba,” +holding it in one arm, while with the other he supported +Lois. The dragging march began again, Dosia, stumbling +sometimes, trying to keep alongside of him, so that when +he turned his head anxiously to look for her she would +be there, to meet his eyes with hers, bravely scorning +fatigue. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_367'></a>367</span> +</p> +<p> +The trees had disappeared now from the side of the road; +long, swelling, wild fields lay on the slopes of the hillside, +broken only by solitary clumps of bushes—fields deserted +of life, broad resting-places for the moonlight, which illumined +the farthest edge of the scene, although the moon +itself was hidden by the crest of a hill. And as they went on, +slowly perforce, he questioned Lois gently; and she, with +simple words, gradually laid the facts bare. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, why didn’t Alexander tell me all this?” he asked +pitifully, and she answered: +</p> +<p> +“He said it was no use; he said you had no money.” +</p> +<p> +“No; but I can sometimes get it for other people! I +could have gone to Rondell Brothers and got it.” +</p> +<p> +“Rondell Brothers? I thought they were difficult to approach.” +</p> +<p> +“That depends. I was with Rondell’s boy in Cuba when +he had the fever, and he’s always said—but that’s neither +here nor there. Apart from that, they’ve had their eye on +your husband lately. You can’t hide the quality of a man +like him, Mrs. Alexander; it shows in a hundred ways +that he doesn’t think of. They have had dealings with him, +though he doesn’t know it—it’s been through agents. Mr. +Warren, one of their best men, has, it seems, taken a fancy +to him. I shouldn’t wonder if they’d take over the typometer +as it stands, and work Alexander in with it. If Rondell +Brothers really take up anyone——!” Girard did not +need to finish. +</p> +<p> +Even Lois and Dosia had heard of Rondell Brothers, the +great firm that was known from one end of the country +to the other—a commercial house whose standing was as +firm, as unquestioned, as the Bank of England, and almost +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_368'></a>368</span> +as conservative. Apart from this, its reputation was +unique. The house was more than a commercial establishment: +it was an institution, in which for three generations +the firm known as Rondell Brothers had carried on, in the +conduct of their business—and carried to high advantage—the +principles of personal honor and honesty and fair +dealing. +</p> +<p> +No boy or man of good character, intelligence, and industry +was ever connected with Rondell’s without its making +for his advancement; to get a position there was to be +assured of his future. Their young men stayed with them, +and rose steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from +them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The +number of young firms whom Rondell Brothers had started +and made, and whose profit also afterwards profited them, +were more than had ever been counted. They were never +deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing +their own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail +themselves, they exacted the same quality in others. What +they traded in needed no other guaranty than the name of +Rondell. +</p> +<p> +If Rondell Brothers took Justin’s affairs in hand! Lois +felt a hope that sent life through her veins. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, let us hurry home!” she pleaded, and tried to +quicken her pace, though it was Girard who supported +her, else she must have fallen, while Dosia slipped a little +behind, still trying to keep her place by his side, so that +she might meet his look when he turned to her. +</p> +<p> +“You’re so tired,” he whispered, with a break in his +voice, “and I can’t help you!” and she tried to beat back +that dear pity and longing with her comforting “No, no, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_369'></a>369</span> +no! I’m not really tired”; her voice thrilled with life, +though her feet stumbled. +</p> +<p> +In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in +the bright, far solitude of those empty fields, where even +their hands might not touch, they two were so heart-close—so +heavenly, so fulfillingly near! +</p> +<p> +Once he whispered in a yearning distress, “Why are you +crying?” And she answered through those welling tears: +</p> +<p> +“I’m only crying because I’m so glad you’re here!” +</p> +<p> +After a while there was a sound of wheels—wheels! Only +a sulky, it proved to be—a mere half-wagon set low down +in the springs, and a trotting horse in front, driven by a +round-faced boy in a derby hat, the turnout casting long, +thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it. +</p> +<p> +“You’ll have to take another passenger,” he said, after +explaining matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded +himself at last to the farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois +might take possession of the six inches allotted to her. +</p> +<p> +She held out her arms hastily. “My boy!” she said, +but it was a voice that had hope in it once more. +</p> +<p> +“Oh, yes, I forgot; here’s the baby,” said Girard, looking +curiously at the bundle before handing it to her. “We’ll +meet you at the Haledon station very soon now; my friends +will have left my hat and coat there for me.” +</p> +<p> +In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, +jogging around a bend of the road. +</p> +<p> +So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel +of the brook again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf +moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the +hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, +so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_370'></a>370</span> +birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood +in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect +which he had, even here, of absorbing all the life of the +scene. +</p> +<p> +Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl +alone, for the first time, with the man who loves her and +whom she loves. At that moment she loved him so much +that she would have fled anywhere in the world from him. +</p> +<p> +The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone: +</p> +<p> +“Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your +shoes before we go on; they’re full of earth.” +</p> +<p> +She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him +while he knelt down and loosened the bows, and took off +the little clumpy low shoes, shaking them out carefully, +and then put them on once more, retying the bows neatly +with long, slowly accomplishing fingers. +</p> +<p> +“They’ll get full of earth again,” she protested, her +voice half lost in the silence. +</p> +<p> +“Then I’ll take them off and shake them out over +again.” +</p> +<p> +He stood up, brushing the sand from his palms, smiling +down at her as she stood up also. “I’ve always dreamed +of doing that,” he said simply. “I’ve dreamed of taking +you in my arms and carrying you off through the night—as +I couldn’t that first time! I’ve longed so to do it. +There have been times when I couldn’t <em>stand</em> it to see you, +because you weren’t mine.” Then—her hands were in his, +his dear, protecting hands, the hands she loved, with their +thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming as well as giving. +</p> +<p> +“Oh—<em>Dosia!</em>” he said below his breath. +</p> +<p> +As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_371'></a>371</span> +that had hurt love rose up between them, and passed away, +forgiven. She foresaw a time when all her life before he +came into it would have dropped out of remembrance as a +tale that is told. And now—— +</p> +<p> +It seemed that he was going to be a very splendid lover! +</p> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_372'></a>372</span>CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT</h2> +<p> +The summer was nearly at an end—a summer +that had brought rehabilitation to the Typometer +Company, yet rehabilitation of a certain kind, +under strict rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally +the same thing, the typometer was now but one factor of +trade among a dozen other patented inventions under the +control of Rondell Brothers. +</p> +<p> +If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet +in Justin’s relation to the business which had seemed so +inspiringly his own, there was a larger relation to greater +interests, a wider field, a greater sense of security, and a +sense of justice in the change; he felt that he had much +to learn. There was something in him that could not profit +where other men profited—that could not take advantage +when that advantage meant loss to another. He was not +great enough alone to reconcile the narrowing factors of +trade with that warring law within him. The stumbling +of Cater would have been another stumbling-block if it +had not been that one; that for which Leverich, with +Martin always behind him, had chosen Justin first had +been the very thing that had fought against them. +</p> +<div><a name='i372' id='i372'></a></div> +<div class='figcenter' style='padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='i017' id='i017'></a> +<img src="images/i372.jpg" alt="He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room" title=""/><br /> +<span class='caption'><em>He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room</em></span> +</div> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_373'></a>373</span></div> +<p> +The summer was far spent. Justin had been working +hard. It was long after midnight. Lois slept, but Justin +could not; he rose and went into the adjoining room, and +sat down by the open window. The night had been very +close, but now a faint breath stirred from somewhere out of +the darkness. It was just before the dawn—Justin looked +out into a gloom in which the darkness of trees wavered +uncertainly and brought with it a vague remembrance. +He had done all this before. When? Suddenly he recollected +the night he had sat at this same window, at the +beginning of this terrible journey, and his thoughts and +feelings then; his deep loneliness of soul, the prevision of +the pain even of fulfillment—an endless, endless arid waste, +with the welling forth of that black spirit of evil in his +own nature as the only vital thing to bear him secret +company—a moment that was wolfish to his better nature. +Almost with the remembrance came the same mood, but +only as reflected in the surface of his saner nature, not +arising from it. +</p> +<p> +As he gazed, wrapped in self-communing, on the vague +formlessness of the night, it began gradually to dissolve +mysteriously, and the outlines of the trees and the surrounding +objects melted into view; a bird sang from somewhere +near by, a heavenly, clear, full-throated call that +brought a shaft of light from across the world, broadening, +as the eye leaped to it, into a great and spreading +glory of flame. +</p> +<p> +It had rained just before; the drops still hung on bush +and tree, and as the dazzling radiance of the sun touched +them every drop also radiated light, prismatic and +scintillating—an almost audibly tinkling joy. So indescribably +wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed +this scene—as of a mighty light informing the least atom of +our tearful human existence—that the profoundest depths +of Justin’s nature opened to the illumination. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_374'></a>374</span> +</p> +<p> +In that moment, with calm eyes, and lips firmly pressed +together, his thoughts reached upward; far, far upward. +For the first time, he felt in accordance with something +divine and beyond—an accordance that seemed to solve +the meaning of life; what had gone and what was to come. +All the hopes, the planning, the seeking and slaving, whatever +they accomplished or did not accomplish, they +fashioned us, ourselves. As it had been, so it still would be. +But for what had gone before, he had not had this hour. +</p> +<p> +It was the journey itself that counted—the dear joys +by the way, that come even through suffering and +through pain—the joy of the red dawn, of the summer +breeze, of the winter sun; the joy of children, the joy of +companionship. +</p> +<p> +He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the +room. +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p>THE END</p> +</div> +<p> + <br /> + <br /> + <br /> +</p> +<div class='center'> +<p><span style='font-size:larger;font-weight:bold;'>By Mary Stewart Cutting</span></p> +</div> +<p> +<b>THE SUBURBAN WHIRL</b> +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +The first story in the book may be properly +termed a “long” story of married life. It is a +wholesome, delicately humorous and pathetic +account of the struggles of a young couple to +establish themselves in the suburbs. With this, +three equally charming shorter stories of “the +happiest time” make up the volume. +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +“The charm of these stories is that they are about real +people in a real world.” <em>San Francisco Call</em>. +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +<em>Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. $1.25</em> +</p> +<p> +<b>LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE</b> +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +“Mrs. Cutting has written a book so typically American +that it should appeal to every American reader who +respects the institution of marriage, and who is honest +enough to admit that love is the only solution of the +problem.” <em>New York Globe</em>. +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +<em>Seventh Edition. Cloth, $1.35</em> +</p> +<p> +<b>MORE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE</b> +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +“As they celebrate true love, not the yearning kind, but +the brand that cherishes and forgets and forgives and +strengthens, they should go with the wedding presents of +every June bride.” <em>Cleveland Leader</em>. +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +<em>Frontispiece. $1.25</em> +</p> +<p> +<b>LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP</b> +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +“Readers who enjoyed the ‘Little Stories of Married +Life’ by this author will not be disappointed in this new +collection....” <em>New York Evening Post</em>. +</p> +<p style='margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;'> +<em>Third Edition. Cloth, $1.25</em> +</p> +<p> +The McClure Company +</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wayfarers, by Mary Stewart Cutting + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + +***** This file should be named 37208-h.htm or 37208-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/0/37208/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wayfarers + +Author: Mary Stewart Cutting + +Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens + +Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37208] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: _Her cousin's arms were at last around her in welcome_] + + + + + THE WAYFARERS + + BY + + MARY STEWART CUTTING + + AUTHOR OF LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP, + LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE, ETC. + + ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS + + NEW YORK + THE McCLURE COMPANY + MCMVIII + + + + + _Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company_ + Published, June, 1908 + Copyright, 1907, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Company + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Her Cousin's Arms were at Last Around Her in Welcome Frontispiece + +They Both Sat Dreamily Watching the Blue Pinnacle of Flame 24 + +Theodosia 34 + +Zaidee Watched Dosia with Benignant Satisfaction 82 + +He Played a Chord or Two More to Her Silence 146 + +It was a Look She Knew 184 + +Like a Pictured Marchioness of Old 190 + +Somebody Began to Come Down with Hurrying, Stumbling Feet 192 + +Mr. Sutton Leaned over Dosia with Eyes for Nobody Else 230 + +Flowers and Children, Children and Flowers 238 + +"Never Let Him Come Here Again--Never, Never!" 246 + +Even Redge Had Been Allowed to Hold Him 278 + +After This He Only Appeared in the Village Street Guarded on + Either Side by a Female Snow 280 + +He Came Toward Her with the Pitcher 312 + +Sat Desolately on the Top Step 334 + +He Held Out His Arm Unconsciously as Lois Stole into the Room 372 + + + + +THE WAYFARERS + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat crowded with human +beings at a quarter of six o'clock in the evening, when the great +homeward rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. At that +time, although there are some returning shoppers and women type-writers +and clerks, the larger number of the passengers are men, sitting in +slanting rows to catch the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an +upright mass at the forward end of the boat. It is noticeable that, with +a few exceptions, those who have gone forth in the morning distinct +individuals, well dressed, freshly shaven, with clean linen, an animated +manner, a brisk step, and an eager-eyed disposition toward the labors of +the day, seem, as they return at night, to be only component parts of a +shabby crowd in indistinguishable apparel, and worn to a uniform +dullness not only of appearance but of attitude and expression. The hard +day's work is over, but the rest is not yet attained. We all know that +between the darkness and the dawn comes the period when vitality is at +its lowest ebb, and in all transition periods there is a subtle +withdrawing of the old force before the new fills its place. In that +temporary collapse in the daily adjustment between two lives, the +business and the domestic, many a man with overwrought brain and tired +body feels that what he has been looking forward to as a happy rest +appears to him now momentarily as an unavoidable and wearying need for +further effort. The demand upon him varies in kind, but it is still +there. + +Men in a mass are neither beautiful nor impressive to look at in the +modern black or sad-colored raiment of every-day custom, and it is +difficult, as the eyes rest on the faces in these commonplace rows, to +realize the space which love inevitably fills in these lives, so far +apart from romance do they seem, forgetful as we are of the worn truth +that romance is a flowering weed which grows in any soil. For three +fourths of these men some woman waits. Those dull eyes can gleam, those +set lips can kiss; these be heroes, handsome men, arbiters of destiny! +There is positive grotesqueness in the idea, seen in this obliterating +haze of fatigue that so maliciously dwarfs and slurs. That man over +there with the long upper lip and closed lids has an episode in his +middle-aged existence to match any in the annals of fiction. That other +beside him, short, fat, with kind eyes and a stubby brown beard, is the +sum of all that is good and beautiful to the wife for whom his +homecoming continues to be the poignant event of the day. This man with +the long, thin face is a modern martyr working himself to death for his +family; this one was in the newspapers last week in a connection best +not remembered. This one--you would pick him out at once from among the +rest--is to be married to-morrow. This man, and this, and this, while +presently unconscious of the great law, are still living under it. Not +only to youth is the promise given; it becomes a larger and more vital +thing as the opportunities of life increase, further spreading in its +fostering of good or evil--a thread so deeply interwoven on the under +side of the fabric that we forget to look for it. + +In every case is a character to be made or marred, not only by the large +molding, but by the infinitesimal touches of that love whose influence +we conventionally limit to young and unmarried persons--while knowing, +whether we acknowledge it or not, that it is the one eternally powerful +element in life. + +Even in a far-off reflex action, this is shown on the ferry-boat in the +fact that when one of this blended concourse of men meets a woman he +instantly regains an individuality; he pulls himself together, his eyes +become bright, his manner concentrated, his clothes set well on him. He +is no longer one of the crowd, but himself. + +Tireless youth may achieve the same individual effect, or unusual +personal beauty, or great happiness, or the possession of a dominant +idea. A number of people, as they came forward on the boat, turned to +look back at two men sitting by the narrow passageway, who in the midst +of the general indifference were talking in a low tone, with obviously +intense earnestness. Those who looked once usually turned a second time +to gaze on the face of one. + +Many a man who has an upright nature and a good disposition fails to +show these facts patently to the casual observer. To Justin Alexander +had been given the grace of a singularly attractive countenance. He was +of a fair complexion, with light hair, a good nose slightly aquiline, +and a well-shaped mouth and chin; but his charm was irrespective of +feature. No one could look at him and not know him to be a man of sweet +and fine honor. The gaze of his keen blue eyes--clear, though not very +large--carried conviction to whomsoever it rested on that a clean and +honest soul dwelt therein. Although he did not in the least realize it, +this had been one of the greatest factors in any success that he had +ever had, joined as it was to good judgment and great physical energy. +Everyone liked him, not for what he said or did, but for what he was, +and for the encouragement of his bright glance, which had a convincing +and magnetic quality in it. He talked intelligently and well, although +not a great deal, and among the many people who were drawn toward him a +corresponding liking on his part was easily inferred. Yet he was, in +fact, innately although dumbly critical; a reticent man as to his own +thoughts and opinions, he took an inward measurement of persons and +circumstances often the very reverse of what was supposed. This attitude +of his was in no sense of the word hypocritical, it came instead from a +constitutional dislike of voicing his innermost feelings. It somehow +hurt him to acknowledge defects in others, and he had also an impersonal +sense of justice which allowed for good qualities in those who were +uncongenial to him; he did not really like the man who sat beside him, +and with whom he had the prospect of being intimately associated, but +even his wife had hardly divined this; certainly Joseph Leverich +himself, large, jovial, and shrewd-eyed, would have been the last to +suspect it. + +"The gist of the matter is this, Alexander," he was saying, as he hit +one hand heavily with the large forefinger of the other, "we want a man +capable not only of overseeing the works,--Harker understands that +pretty well,--but of managing the real business of the factory and +representing it with business men; neither Foster nor I can attend to +it--Great Scott, I wish we could! We haven't the time. We bought the +whole outfit a couple of years ago; it's only one of twenty other irons +we have in the fire." + +"I know that your interests are large," said Alexander, as Leverich +paused. + +"The great drawback to having large interests is that you have to +delegate so much of the management to others. When we took up this, it +ran itself, after a fashion; but since that a dozen other people are +making the same thing--of course, with slight variations, but +practically the same thing. Patents don't really protect you much. Now +we want our machine pushed; but neither Foster nor I, for different +reasons, can do this. The fact is, we don't want to appear at all. And +we've had our eye on you for some time." + +"This is news to me," said Alexander. + +"Now the control of the factory has to be settled suddenly, out of hand; +somebody has got to take hold. So we make you the offer. We will deposit +fifty thousand to your credit, to be used as working capital--you can't +branch out with less; you've got to be able to work to advantage. The +days have gone when a business could be set going on a couple of +thousand and worked up with industry and frugality, as the copy-books +say, into the millions. Small concerns nowadays go to the wall--and +serve 'em right, I say; only fools believe in success without money. +We'll see to your backing! Of course, the interest will be paid out of +the business, you don't undertake it individually. At the end of two +years more we ought to have a big thing." + +"And if we don't?" said Alexander. + +The other's dim gooseberry eyes suddenly flashed. "If you think we will +not, you are not the man we want--he's got to have the courage of his +convictions to be worth his salt. But you can't put me off this way--I +know you. Take up the project or leave it--I say this, but in reality +you can't leave it, and you know it. A man doesn't get a chance like +this twice. Hamilton came to us the other day for the position, and we +refused him, although he had capital and we wouldn't have had to advance +a cent of the money we're willing to put up for you." + +"But why are you willing to?" Justin looked with his bright eyes at the +other. + +"Because you are the man we want!" Leverich leaned forward eagerly, and +shifted his large frame so as to put each muscle into an easier +position. "Don't let's go over that old ground again. You've had just +the experience in the old company that we need; but it's your wide +acquaintance that tells, and it's that that we're willing to buy. We +believe you can make a market for our goods." + +"It is an important step," said the other thoughtfully, "to leave a +certainty for an uncertainty--not that I should regard it as an +uncertainty if I took it," he added, with a smile. + +"I know it's hard to break away and start out for yourself when you have +a family; lots of men go all their lives in a rut because they haven't +the courage to take the plunge. But you don't want to work for somebody +else all your life; you don't want to feel that you're wasting all your +best years. By and by it will be too late. And a growing family takes +more money each year, instead of less--you've got to think of that, too. +It's a terrible thing to be always cramped, and know there's no way out +of it in this world." + +"You don't need to tell me all this, Leverich," said Justin coolly. + +"No, I know I don't; but I want you to realize that you have your chance +now--one in a million. I'm sorry to hurry you, but you see the way we're +fixed. Say the word now! Get it off your mind and you'll sleep easier. I +know what your word is--as good as your bond. _I'd_ take it! You can +give any formal decision later." + +Justin still smiled, but he shook his head; though capable of quick +decision when necessary, it was yet impossible to hurry him; his actions +in every case depended on his own thought, and gained no volition from +outside influences, which might indeed retard but could never compel. +Virtually he had concluded to accept Leverich's offer, but he would take +his own time about saying so; he felt the haste of the other man to be +somewhat of an offense against decency. + +"Well!" Leverich shrugged his heavy shoulders at the bright +impenetrableness that was like a shining armor. "We said we'd give you +until Wednesday, so of course we will. We will bring the books around +to-night anyway, and go over them, as we planned; you can't afford to +lose any time. And talk to your wife about it, she's a sensible +woman--and one who longs, like all the rest of 'em, for more than she's +got," he added to himself, with cynical satisfaction. + +"Martin is watching us now," he continued, waving his hand over toward +the other side of the boat, where a slight, insignificant-looking man +with small features and a large, bulging forehead lifted his hand in an +answering gesture. "You'd never think, to look at him, that he was what +he is; he has more brains in his little finger than I have in my whole +head." Leverich spoke with evident sincerity. "I'm just a plain man of +business, but Foster's a genius. He fixed on you from the start. Hello, +we're 'most in already." + +The crowd from the rear cabin had begun to push through the passageway +and surge to the front of the boat, which was still some distance from +the dock. The man next them folded up his paper, and Justin and Leverich +rose mechanically and stood amid the throng, which became more and more +compact every moment. + +Suddenly both men started as they looked back at the fresh accessions to +the crowd, and pushed sideways, falling behind a little to get in line +with a tall and slender young woman with pink roses in a black hat, and +a dotted veil that emphasized her rich coloring. She raised her head as +a voice beside her said: + +"Good evening, Mrs. Alexander!" + +"Oh, is that you, Mr. Leverich? How do you do? I haven't met a soul I +knew on the boat until this moment, and now I see six people. Oh, +Justin!" She had faced around as a hand was laid on her arm, and stood +looking up at him with happily surprised eyes, while he smiled back at +her with a slight flush on his own cheek. "I was looking for you all the +time," she said. + +The sudden and unexpected meeting of husband and wife has a singular +element in it--it is somewhat like unconsciously approaching a mirror in +which one views a stranger who turns out to be one's self. That swift +and impersonal view gives an impression as a whole that can be reached +in no other way. Lois Alexander noticed at once that her husband's +clothes needed brushing, and that the velvet collar of his overcoat was +worn at the edges--she had hardly seen the coat this year except as he +was putting it on or taking it off. It gave her a slight shock to see +that the tired lines around his eyes made his face look older than she +was accustomed to think of it. He, for his part, experienced the same +slight shock in looking at her; he saw the little imperfections in her +face, and the roses in her hat appeared to him perhaps too pink and +girlish. Yet through all this there was an indescribable thrill of happy +possession and loving admiration of each other, touchingly sweet, and +all the tenderer for the hint of passing years. Among all the men +around, Justin was the king; among all women, she was the most +desirable. + +After the expected sensations of the usual home greeting and the +accustomed kiss, it gave a spice to intimacy to meet perforce as +strangers. She leaned partly against him as she talked to Mr. Leverich, +and he pressed her arm with his strong fingers under cover of her cloak +and made the color come and go in her cheek; her eyes mutely implored +him to stop, and he enjoyed her confusion. Husband and wife looked well +together, in a certain vitality of movement and expression common to +both which made others instinctively turn to observe them. + +"I have been trying to discover my husband all the way across," she +complained to Leverich. "I was sure that he was on this boat. Why didn't +you look out for me, Justin?" + +"You didn't say you were going in town to-day," he expostulated. + +"How often have I told you to look out for me? I am likely to go in at +any time. I had to get some things for the children. Have you--have you +seen anyone to-day?" She spoke disconnectedly, as conscious as a girl of +the disconcerting pressure on her arm. + +"No--oh, yes; I saw Eugene Larue this morning, he's back from the other +side." + +"Did he say when he would be out?" + +"No." + +"Did you ask him?" + +"No. The fact is, Lois, I only saw him for a moment and I never thought +about it." + +"Oh, it doesn't make any difference. I wanted to speak to you about +Theodosia; I've had a letter, and she's coming. We are going to have a +young lady as a visitor this winter," she added formally in explanation +to Mr. Leverich, who still stood at her elbow. "She's coming up North to +study music; she's very pretty, I believe, and clever." + +"A relation?" hazarded Mr. Leverich. + +"Yes; she's a young cousin of mine--I haven't seen her since she was a +child. It will be so pleasant to have a girl in the house." + +"You like company," he returned approvingly, "my wife does, too; we +always have a houseful. She says I show off better when we have +visitors--can't let my angry passions rise. By the way, Alexander, what +time shall I bring the books over to-night?" + +Lois Alexander's startled, questioning glance sought her husband's, and +his gave a gravely confidential assent before he answered: + +"Any time you say." + +"Will eight o'clock be too early?" + +"No, that will suit me very well." + +"Well, good-by!" He took off his hat in farewell to Lois, and +disappeared in the crowd, as his broad shoulders forced a sinuous +passage through the throng. + +"How are the children?" Justin asked his wife. + +"They're all right." She paused, and then said: "If you are to look over +those books, I suppose we can't go to the Calenders' to-night." + +"No." The dark line of the pier struck athwart the dusky light and +divided the windows in two. "At least, I cannot, but there's no reason +why you shouldn't go." + +"You know that I will not go without you." + +"Other women do." + +"Well, _I_ will not." + +"What a foolish girl!" His tone was fond. "Then--_take_ care!" The boat +had bumped into the dock; in the struggling press of the stampeding +crowd, Lois clung to her husband's arm and he strove to ward off the +crush from her. When they were at last over the gang-plank, joining in +the hurrying, straggling procession toward the train, he looked at her +with tender solicitude. + +"You shouldn't come out on the boat so late as this. Was it too much for +you?" + +"Oh, no, no! I do this alone lots of times." She felt so vividly happy +that her breathlessness was hardly an annoyance as they dodged in front +of the incoming drays of another boat and waved aside the impeding +newsboys crying the evening papers. + +She foresaw that they would be separated in the train, and found voice +enough to whisper to him: + +"Are you to decide to-night?" + +"I have virtually decided now." + +"To accept?" + +"Yes." + +Her breath came suddenly; with the monosyllable an electric wave had set +the pulses of both tingling. The spoken word had not failed of its +wonted power; it had at this moment opened a gate hitherto closed. Both +husband and wife felt their feet at last set on the great highroad of +modern romance, the road to wealth, along which ride daily, as of old, +knights in armor, duly caparisoned, with shield and spear, bent, not on +deeds of chivalry, but on one glittering quest--a grim pathway, veiled +by a golden haze. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +It was a mighty hour. Justin, sitting by the open window with his head +upon his hand, looking out into the night, saw but dimly the pale +shining of the familiar stars, in the search for the rising star of his +own future. It was far on in the small hours, and he had not yet slept, +although he had come up-stairs at twelve o'clock with the firm intention +of undressing and going to bed at once. He had, instead, dropped down +into the wicker chair in the unlighted sitting-room to think for a few +moments--and a few moments--and a few moments more. + +The dining-table which he had left was filled with sheets of paper +covered with fine figures, and his mind at first continually reverted to +them, multiplying, subtracting, and correcting with keen facility, and +with infinitesimal changes in the final result, which he knew, +notwithstanding, could be only approximate, no matter how painstakingly +his fancy strove to render it exact. + +After a while, however, other thoughts asserted themselves. The vast +influences of the night were around him as from the deep places of the +universe--the depth of dusky gloom, the depth of silence. The window +looked out over a garden, but in this dusky gloom it had lost the +semblance of earth and seemed, instead, but the under part of an +enveloping cloud in which he was the only breathing human life. The +vague dark branches of the trees waving across the lesser darkness spoke +of even deeper mystery in their mute witness to that breath from the +unseen which moved them. + +It was not the problem of the universe of which all this spoke to Justin +Alexander, though as such it had been part and parcel of his questioning +youth. The days when he might have sung with Omar were gone with those +speculative midnight hours, the foregathering with death, the conscious +search for higher meanings, the effort to solve the unknowable; whatever +philosophy was evolved from those journeys into the dark was labeled and +put away on a remote shelf, where the mind occasionally reverted to it +with a sigh of thoughtful possession, but for which there was no longer +any daily use. There was even a chance that on bringing the precious +package out into the modern daylight it might be found to have changed +its color entirely. + +The problem of his own life was what this hour held in its shifting hold +for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines on which he gazed seemed to +prefigure the uncertain boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a +family, the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, even +though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space. + +The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for +six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this +moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing +calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with +a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of +responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, +depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he +had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not +now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years +piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of +it. + +In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed +before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty +longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of +mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest +sympathy. His wife--she was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her +utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one +who lived in an alien sphere. His children--he loved them fondly, but +the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he +could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his role of +provider--neither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the +rest of freedom. + +Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the +inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire +for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his +fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank +under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the +brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or +question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, +but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the +warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under +his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the +long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the +stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, +careless day! + +The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him +to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, +without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked +beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, +and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now +with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched +his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been +freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he +sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His +roaming fancy---- + +"Are you up still?" + +Justin started--it was the voice of his wife. He came back to the +familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so +instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; +they became already as though they had never been as he answered: + +"Yes; I couldn't have slept if I had gone to bed." + +"But you're all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing +in on you!" + +Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around +his neck. + +"Shut the window at once! You're so imprudent. You must remember that it +isn't summer now." + +She lent herself to his embrace for a moment. + +"Do you know how late it is?" + +"No, and I don't want to. Let's sit here together for a little while, +I'm unspeakably wide awake! I'll make up a little fire for a few minutes +and we'll have a midnight talk." + +She laughed with evident pleasure. "Well!" + +He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth, +lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame +brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he +leaned forward--the light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set +mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her +bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he +turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and +wavered and fell around her. + +It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the +parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic +wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of +social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of +fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with +banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to +abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her +knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with +her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her +pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern +illustration of youthful motherhood. + +She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her +form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft +whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly +colored--her lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed +starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now, +unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual +expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of +herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you. + +She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward +watching the blaze in a new absorption. + +"I know you're thinking of the new venture." + +"Yes; it's a good deal to think of." + +"I should say so!" She caught her breath admiringly. "I listened to you +and those men talking to-night until I couldn't stand it a moment +longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy!" + +"They won't drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish," said +Justin emphatically. + +"But I thought it was all settled that you _could_!" + +"Oh, yes--on paper. Everything looks all right there--and it shall be, +too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow +for differences. I know the machine is good--I don't take any chances on +that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market +all the time to compete with; we haven't a monopoly." + +"Well, you can make your prices lower than the others," she suggested +brightly. + +"Oh, yes, of course," he explained with patience, "but if we put prices +too low there's no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though; +we've got to be seen doing business, even if it's at a loss. That's what +the fifty thousand's for--to tide us over just such a time." + +"It is a great deal to have to pay back," she said anxiously, leaning +forward to throw a small log on the fire. "I don't like you to saddle +yourself with such a debt. I don't like it!" + +What weighed on him most--the personal care and responsibility--made no +impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large +ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the +exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a +woman's horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate +business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace. + +"I wish you could get along without the money." + +"I'm glad enough to have it," he replied. "Rest assured, Lois, if they +didn't think me worth it they wouldn't lend it to me--they expect big +interest on their investment." + +"And is our living to come out of it, too?" + +"Oh, yes--until there's an income." + +"How much will you take?" + +"Oh, no fixed sum--just as little as we can get along with at present. +We'll go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our +feet." + +"Indeed, I'll economize!" She clasped her hands earnestly. "There are +only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we can't do +without. After that we'll need next to nothing. This rug, for +instance--it's in rags, I'm ashamed to bring anyone up here--but that +won't cost much, and we've _got_ to get one for the front hall; it isn't +decent. And I'll have to buy the children's winter clothing before it +gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last +year's coat looks like a ruffle." + +"Oh, of course, get what is needed," said the father resignedly. "Some +money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you +can." + +She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back +her lost ground. + +"Ah, don't let's leave the fire yet," she pleaded, as he made a motion +to rise. "I want to sit here a few minutes more, and it's going to blaze +up so beautifully! It's so seldom that we ever really get a chance to +talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this +way. I've hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill--a man +with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children +and for me you would have left the place long ago." + +"If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it +now," he answered gently. + +"Yes, I know. It's been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately, +I've seen how worried you were. Dear, I don't want to be a drag; I want +to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can." + +"You always help me." + +"Ah, no, I don't; _I_ feel it, though you may not." She paused, and went +on again with a tremulous note in her voice: "Justin, I miss you so much +sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadn't seen you +at all!" + +"You see all there is of me," said Justin tersely. "How many times a +year do I go out of an evening without you?" + +"Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the +servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you +come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I +don't get any chance at all. You _never_ ask me anything, or notice when +I don't feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit +up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill +and I not know it?" + +"No, I suppose not," said Justin. "But I'm afraid you'll have another +headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois." + +"No, I will not!" She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a +bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it +filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly +wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had +broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely. + +She tried to speak evenly as she said: "I didn't mean that to sound as +if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make +things--different." + +She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer +to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she +had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain +girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his +gaze. + +It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years +seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it +still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to +act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To +live one's own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest +that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the +large known phenomena of nature. + +Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten +years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed +upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century--life must be +nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of +wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one's inner limit of youth +lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of +themselves as young married people with a future all to come. + +The tender proprietorship of Justin's caress was more comforting to Lois +than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame +as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his +shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind +preoccupied with divergent claims. + +The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half +nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It +was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always +felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to +walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by +the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys--a +doll's cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the +window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive +stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter +domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of +the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a +heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a +silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more +or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the +wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a +bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor +were picture-books and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to speak of +the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of +man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar +upon his hearthstone. + +[Illustration: _They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of +flame_] + +Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of +character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for +her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to +have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most +unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the +thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her +lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her +estimate of him--the honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of +disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of +those he liked, the love of her--all were there; but she was beginning +gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that shining +outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and +preference and habit of which she knew nothing--only as time went on did +she begin to perceive the extent of it. + +Those disappointing moments when they were not in accord--whole days +sometimes dropped out of the week--left a void which no caresses filled. +It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed. +Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of +those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship of wedlock, are a +thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing +moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but +evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She +could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually +seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some +larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines +became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had +held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was +always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything +was more or less upsetting,--marriage, babies, sickness, +housekeeping,--years when domestic situations changed their shape daily, +an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an +entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the +servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There +were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone +to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him, +after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end; +when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started +off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did +not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to +find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a +contradiction to everything that she had ever been before. + +The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a +revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night, +was lacking. + +When she spoke again it was to say: "When do you take the new place?" + +"Next month." + +"I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will you go in on a +later train in the mornings, dear?" + +"I'll take an earlier one." + +"But then you'll come out sooner in the afternoon?" + +"I'll come out much later." + +"Oh, oh!" she sighed, with the prevision of long hours of loneliness for +herself. + +"At least, you can take more than that miserable two weeks' holiday in +the summer." + +"My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. You don't +understand; I've got to work." + +There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and the room had sunk +into partial obscurity. She was the first to speak, as before, +conquering anew the tremulousness in her voice: + +"Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next month?" + +"Yes. How long is she to stay?" + +"For all winter. She's to study music, you remember?" + +"For all winter!" He sat up straight with the emphasis of his words. +"Why, where will you put her?" + +"Oh, I'll manage that. But I do wish we had a larger house; this is +maddening sometimes." + +"Perhaps we'll be able to build some day." + +"Oh, if we could really have our own house!" + +She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that future which is the +summit of good to suburban dwellers, when the contracted space of a +rented house can be changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible +closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout. + +"I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the loveliest things +to-day in town." + +Already the thought of brass and mahogany and Oriental rugs, rich in +texture and delicious in coloring, filled her mind. + +To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession of money +meant the opportunity to buy; the possession of yet more money would +mean more opportunity to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the +ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with ease and +promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most American husbands in his +station, the sum spent upon house and family far exceeded in ratio his +own personal expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually +looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented to him +pre-eminently further business possibilities, the power to play +competently in the great game, with the result of a sufficient provision +for his wife and children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at +the thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in this next +year---- + +"Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go to town Friday, or +wait until next month?" asked Lois suddenly. + +"You had better wait," said Justin, with decision. He rose, and added: +"You must go to bed, Lois." + +She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially. + +"Good night." + +"You are not going to sit up later!" + +"Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for something in +this paper I forgot to notice earlier." + +He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he must stay for a +brief space beyond the sound of her voice. + +"Now, don't wait another moment, or you'll get cold." He spoke +authoritatively. "The fire's almost out." + +He had already turned from her, and was sitting down by the dim flicker +of the newly lighted candle, absorbed once more in figures, with the +newspaper before him. The midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; +both experienced the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows +time-worn and trivial conversation. + +Lois' pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she left the room; +but after a slight interval she returned with a gliding step and softly +placed a fresh log upon the dull red embers of the dying fire, and +fanned them noiselessly until a flame leaped out again, holding her +white draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling across +her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful self-forgetting smile +shone out and became a part of the light around him before she vanished +once more through the doorway. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, plush-covered seat of the +sleeping-car, with her hands folded in her lap, looking out of the +window at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green rows of +cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of scrub-oak and pine, +dotted here and there with gray cabins, around which negroes, little and +big, in scanty garments were grouped to watch the train go by; +occasionally it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a +wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced by no name for +the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic legend, "Southern Express +Company," on a swinging board at one end. It was before these ultimate +days when factories are springing up all over the new South, and she had +not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their staring yellow +frames by the side of the muddy streams; only the cotton-fields and the +scrub-oaks ran along by the train, with the view of the blue mountains +here and there, and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had +never seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world outside +of her home. + +There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, as that +of the girl who is supposed to be contented with the little rounds of +household life. Dosia's mother had died when she was a small child, but +so much love and care had been given her by relatives and by her father, +a professor in a small college and a gentle and good man, that she had +never felt the loss. When she was twelve years old her father married +again, and, on account of his failing health, they moved from their home +in the West to the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small +income which he already possessed, to engage in some industry suitable +to his limited powers; but in the enervating climate he gradually lost +all ambition and business habits. He became yellow in complexion and +slouching as to appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than +before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the loungers around +the village store or the new people from the North who came to learn the +methods pertaining to cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything +should be done. + +He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always placid and +amiable, and only regretting, as he continually affirmed, that he could +not provide for the family as he should. The children, of whom there +were four by this second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, +who was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, and almost as +self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother had from the first +attached herself to Dosia, whom she treated even at that early stage of +life less as a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all +emergencies. + +Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period in her existence +the unthinking content of childhood had left her. It was natural to live +in the small, poorly built house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with +broken fences, with small children to dress and care for and a baby to +be tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, with a +continual desultory striving after a refinement of dress and living that +was never accomplished. It was a matter of course to be always "clearing +up," yet never in order, and to be always economizing temporarily in +view of the stated remittance which never could be used for paying +anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia was a sweet-natured +child, affectionate and helpful, with a healthy constitution which made +work unnoticeable, and she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned +way according to the views of her elders, without criticism or comment. +Her education, although desultory, had been fairly good, depending +partly on teachers who came from the North and stayed in Balderville for +their health, and partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well +as culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he felt like it; +for that, as everything else, was a matter of inclination with him and +not of duty. She was fond of reading, and had also somewhat of a talent +for music, which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results +with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she had been +well taught at the beginning. + +Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent order that +obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors was bad or good, +according to the year, like the peaches or cotton. With some of these +visitors Dosia formed eager, transitory friendships, but with others +there could be no assimilation. There were a few nice families settled +in the place, more or less bound together by a community of interest +centering in Balderville and the future of their children, who were +usually sent away to school when half grown. + +Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing faculties of its +own--a terrible clear-sightedness, for one thing, and a black-and-white +ruled-out sense of justice and injustice; it brought an absolutely new +sense of values to Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to +dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked upon as +entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and stepmother, were +really the inevitable expressions of law. She saw that the true +character of her parents was quite different from their own idea of it; +that they would never change materially, and therefore, in the very +nature of things, their fortunes could never change materially; they +would always be going a little faster or a little slower on a down +grade. She wondered at the exhaustless capacity of complacently +believing in worn fallacies which her young eyes saw pitilessly as such. +Her stepmother still looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as +a successful and energetic man of business for the moment only disabled +by his failing health, and believed herself to be always on the point of +managing the little money they had with superhuman economy, so that it +would cover all household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could +never be more money, and that what there was must always slip away. This +knowledge laid the future waste and rendered effort futile. What was the +use, for instance, of putting cushions on the lounge over the place +where there was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new +one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of pretending that +when the cracked and heterogeneous plates and dishes were replaced the +table would be properly set once more? They never would be replaced. + +If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered +her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a +little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and +there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to +the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the +older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be +spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The +young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and +childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always +said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they "went +together," and arrangements were made in view of this known fact +whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never "gone with" +anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor +staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and +picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked +and took care of the children, and read, and found her father's +walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went +on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why +should she not be? + +[Illustration: _Theodosia_] + +But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after +the day's work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children +played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each +other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were +contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own +discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself +which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she +was nobly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didn't know +how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the +advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had +listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was +ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served +after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living. + +Many a night--like many another girl!--Dosia sat in the window of her +shelving attic room, bathed in the golden moonlight, with her hair +falling on her shoulders and her hands clasped before her, a picture for +none to see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were around her. +The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! In vain she tried to stem +it. She longed inexpressibly for that outer world, of which she had +read, where youth was a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, +clever, self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old regime +where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to learn more +about many things,--she longed to study music,--but she felt no +inspiration and no desire for the life of an artist; she was, in fact, +just a girl, who longed with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less +intensely, for the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, +the excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little daily +delights, and--love. She dimly discerned unknown glories that made her +breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed of some one in the far future who +would be very good and very noble, whose love would hold her to +everything that was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove +herself extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, and whose +hand on hers would set her heart beating. She imagined pouring out her +heart to him,--that heart which seemed to be forever shut in her breast +now, with none to understand it, none to care,--going to him with all +these doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the blessedness +of his response. "You darling," he would say, "don't you know I was +loving you all the time? We neither of us knew each other, to be sure, +but the love was there all the same; it had existed since the beginning +of the world." + +She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy which affects not +only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, and which does not need +iron as a curative power so much as a legitimate and healthy excitement. +Even Mrs. Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and showed +listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors had openly +commented on the fact; she said placidly that she was really worried +about Dosia, and wished that she could have a change. And then one of +those impossible, wonderful things happened which alter the whole +surface of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia was to +go to New York to study music, and spend the winter with a married +cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of the suburbs. + +Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, dressed in a new suit +of blue serge, which had been sent from Atlanta, to fit her measure, +with the rest of her traveling outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, +with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the +seat, and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the +fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess. + +Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of +choice--bleared and shapeless in effect from much "making over," as +purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for +such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she +almost felt as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with +the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted perfume +of the suede gloves was subtly intoxicating. She took furtive glimpses +of herself in the glass panel beside her, and the sight filled her with +a delighted wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so +much like other people. + +It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her face; she had that +exaggerated idea of the importance of dress which belongs to people who +have never been able to exercise their taste or fancy for +it--particularly those who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet +was like a picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she cared +little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthful--just a girl's +face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, when the color varied in +it with the moment. She had blue eyes, a good mouth with a short upper +lip, white teeth, and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert +look in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; her +slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her lips parted +unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, with her varying color, +gave her a charm. + +But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless expression +of extreme youth which experience has never touched, which has nothing +to remember and nothing to forget--the typical fair white page, still +unwritten upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday. + +When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family +group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, +with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn +hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and +unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a +large brass safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted +children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, +brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing +kisses with the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The elders +had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled remorsefully at the +thought; she had been so shamelessly glad to go! And yet, she did love +them. Mingled with a sense of kindness was also a strange little +disappointment--she felt that when they turned homeward with their backs +to the train they would let her slip out of their lives with the same +ease with which they had accustomed themselves to let other things go, +with a selfish inertia too deep to feel anything long. Only the +baby--little Rolf--he would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a +while, for his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her arms +yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of latent motherhood +unknown to her placid stepmother. It was characteristic of this girl, +who was tired of taking care of children, that the fact of there being a +two-year-old baby also at her cousin's house seemed now its crowning +attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations about the +darling. + +After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of traveling, +blurred out the past for her. She was journeying to the life that was +hers by right; the luxurious appointments of the car, her own new +elegance, began to seem a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, +indeed, she had been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card +offered her by the white-aproned colored waiter and selected her dinner +as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing it that she thought +he had forgotten it; but at last he brought the meal, and she ate it +from the table which he had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; +there was an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act +which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence. +Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, and took off her +jacket, and made herself comfortable, as she saw others had done. The +car was by no means crowded, and she had seen from the first that there +was no one who could serve as a peg to hang a romance on--only +middle-aged women and men, and a mother with half-grown children. She +fell to wondering, as she had done many times before, what her cousins +would be like; she was prepared to love them dearly. With the +unconscious egotism of her age, everything in this new life was to +revolve around her. The other players were accessories--she was the star +performer. + +The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and dark, of green and +shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered white houses and rounded +overhanging slopes that shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamed--and +dreamed. Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush +and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and impalpable +cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the berths were made up, +people sitting the while in tired, silent groups in other sections, +holding on to cloaks and hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind +the curtains. Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the +brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and then lay down +at last without removing any clothing, with both hands tucked under her +soft cheek and her eyes staring before her. There had been a bustle of +walking to and fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while +all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward a little when +the train went suddenly around a curve. Gradually those wide-open blue +eyes began to close; she seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on +pillows of roseate down, between waking and sleeping; and then--_God in +heaven_! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, helpless +terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching her, beating her +against the planks, jamming her into awful darkness as if she were a +creature without bone or sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself +among the other voices shrieking. A plunge, and then--nothing. + +The night was inky black, and the wind that swept down the gorge brought +an occasional raindrop with it. Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long +while after that she heard voices, then a man's hand was passed over her +face and a voice close above her said, "It is a woman," and added, +bending still nearer to her, "Can you speak?" + +Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; instead, she broke +into a helpless sobbing in which there were no tears. The man spoke to +some one near, and she became aware that there were other sounds of +talking and distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light +twinkled and disappeared. + +Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting her head gently, +placed something soft under it. His touch was compassionate, and his +tone still more so as he said: + +"Are you in much pain?" + +She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke for her. She +wanted to question him, but could not. He seemed to divine her thought. + +"Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you wonder where you are. +There has been a terrible accident--the trestle gave way, and one car +fell down here; the others, I believe, smashed farther up somewhere. +People are coming to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do +now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do just as I tell +you? Move your right foot--yes, there--now your left--now this arm--now +the other. Why, that's brave of you!"--as she tried to raise herself a +little. "Perhaps you will be able to stand soon." He broke off suddenly +with a groan: "I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to Heaven I +had! but there's not a drop left in the flask." + +The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, and the sounds +of moving and confusion around increased. The lights Dosia had seen +above seemed to get nearer, and then twinkled down close to the wreck; +but even then, in the opaque blackness of the night, they remained only +isolated points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they +dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered and went backward +and forward; with them came more voices and stumbling feet, sounds half +swallowed by the depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of +wind. + +Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the fleeting flash +of a lantern above her revealed that there was no one beside her; it was +like being dropped again into nothingness. She did not know how long she +lay there. With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, +though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised her to a +sitting position, and held her there, with her head resting against the +shoulder of this new-found friend. "Drink this--all of it. I want to see +if you can stand after a few moments, and perhaps walk--there are so few +stretchers." Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder. + +"No, I will not leave you"--he spoke as one would to a little child, as +she made a faint, terrified motion to hold his arm--"I will not leave +you. I will take you every step of the way. You are a girl, aren't you? +Were you alone on the train? Had you no friends with you?" + +She whispered with some difficulty, "No one." + +"You are perhaps spared much." There was a silence. Presently he said +gently: "We must not wait here too long; we must follow the +lanterns--see, they are going. You can stand; now try and walk. Give me +your hand--that way. Lean on me. Take one step--now another. Come! Don't +be afraid--you _must_." + +With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost carrying her, she +essayed to walk. Shaking at each step pitifully at first, then growing +stronger, with one hand locked in his, she found herself ascending the +rocky path of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The +lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel into which the +light was walled solidly. He was leading her along the railroad-ties. As +she stumbled from time to time, she became formlessly conscious that he +winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from +falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering +grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such +a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly. + +He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously. +"What's the matter?" + +"I'm hurting you." + +"Not more than I can stand. Don't stop to talk about it; we mustn't fall +behind. Hold my hand fast." + +The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the +wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were +all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, +endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the +protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand--a strong, clean touch, +that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With +her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that +she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he +knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow +as one in the unspoken comforting of trust. + +Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses' +hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them. +Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were +others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, +carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with +whom she had exchanged no word of farewell. + +She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she +lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But +through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all +the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, +unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of +which is her greatest good on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had +begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession +of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing +of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at +an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in +consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had +been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory +and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It +was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce +in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction +which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he +propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; +his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of +regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry +to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow +any more. + +But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a +man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty +thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly +pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that +character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he +insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his +overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had +certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is +first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did +not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated +itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his +closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in +it. It is the transmutation of metal into the blood--the revivifying +power which the seekers after the philosopher's stone recognized so +thoroughly. + +He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, +and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a +newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel +undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by +with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager +look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening +condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the +wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and +concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energy--an +energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as +a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it. + +His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall +Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries +which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and +filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, +being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small +wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used +to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls +in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they +walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and +damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one +of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river. + +As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, +and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly +did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, +loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the +entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes +of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard +the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, +moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street +came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and +looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward +and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, +pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out +around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, +but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories +there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron +railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; +basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted +vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; +attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in +the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, +was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering +high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those +below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich. + +Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences--the +houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses +again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began +to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships' +stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that +attracted Justin's particular attention, wedged in as it was between the +taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen +by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; +the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrance--a relic +of bygone days--had only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black +hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so +near the street that it was easy to see into the front room--an interior +so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it. + +The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a +brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing +the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly +covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps +stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken +remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth +sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give +that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who +gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen +and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the +human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a +momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up, +half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye +of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered +suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had +turned into this street from Broadway. + +The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comradeship +which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and +hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was +now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent +reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of +the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name +conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily, +and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the +point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in +response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling +his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of +proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome +pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning. + +The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off +near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side +were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the +lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory; +from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery. +The larger parts of the instrument--the copper tubing and the steel +bars--were bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper +functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were +manufactured. + +The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine +invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a +manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly +to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during +which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New +York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in +construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various +cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment. +Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of +timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, +seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard +Typometer--so called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of +elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it. +The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite +attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They +said all it needed now was push. + +Thousands of little books entitled "Sixty Seconds with the Typometer" +had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive +brevity, and in large black print that could be read without glasses, +Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you +could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers, +in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate. + +The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the +renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its +future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory +was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been +associated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear +ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly +man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had +been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the +requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justin's services +would have been needed at all. + +As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman +stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a +slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that +drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, +muscular arms. + +To Justin's pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of +pleasure in his eyes: + +"Good morning, sir. I'm glad to see you here so early. You've perhaps +heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati." + +"No," said Justin; "I came up here first. That's good news, Bullen." + +"Yes, sir. I've made a list of the stock we'll need as soon as we can +get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. I'll want to +see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men." + +"Very well," said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the +office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the +assistant manager. + +"And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander," he said. + +They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one, +it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified +ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this +first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin +and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had +weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He +meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best. +If orders came in every day like this--and why should they not? if not +now, at least in the near future---- + +The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell +of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as +one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by +the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully +absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the +master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been +furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the +store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it. +Afterwards---- + +"By the way, Harker," he asked once, in an interval of waiting, "what is +the concern across the street?" + +"It's much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander." + +Justin looked up, surprised. "I never knew that." + +"Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; it's the +Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after a fashion--not as +good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs horribly after you've worked it +for a while. They've got one in the billiard-room around the corner." + +"And this Mr. Cater--has he been in the business long?" + +"He was here when we came, two years ago." + +Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a decent place for +luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was hardly surprised, when he +seated himself by a little white table in a small, rather dark room, to +look up and recognize opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L. +Cater. + +"I was wondering how soon you'd find this place out," said the latter. +He spoke with a Southern drawl. "You don't get a very large repertoire +here, but what they do give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and +that's an art. And it's clean." + +"Yes," said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to be usually +spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more social feeling toward +those who let him alone, but even the shadows of this golden day were +translucent. + +"I reckon you know who I am--Angevin L. Cater. Angevin's a queer name, +isn't it? French--several generations back." + +To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was required. After a +moment Mr. Cater began again: + +"Perhaps you think it's strange--my speaking to you in this way. Of +course I've seen you coming to Number 270, and knew that you were taking +charge there, but that's not the whole of it. I'm from Georgia--got a +wife and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville now." He paused +to give this impressive fact full weight. "You've some relatives there, +haven't you, by the name of Linden?" + +"My wife has," said Justin, with new attention. + +"Well, I reckon I heard of you some this fall when I was home. Miss +Theodosia was talking of spending the winter North with you, she asked +me if I knew Mr. Justin Alexander, and I had to tell her no. I didn't +think I'd meet up with you so soon. Heard from her lately?" + +"We expect Miss Linden to-morrow," said Justin. "How is Mr. Linden +getting on? We haven't heard very good accounts of him lately." + +"Oh, Linden's a mighty fine man; he ain't successful, that's all. I find +a heap of mighty fine men that ain't successful, don't you? I don't +think it's anything against a man that he ain't successful. Besides, old +man Linden ain't got his health; you can't do anything if you haven't +got your health. His wife's a mighty fine lady--pretty, too; but she +ain't much on dressin' up; stays at home and takes care of her children. +And Miss Dosia--well, Miss Dosia's a peach. Talented, too--I tell you, +she can bang the ivories! But she's been kinder pinin' lately; I reckon +she needs a change--though a change isn't always what it's cracked up to +be. I've found that out, haven't you? I changed into a New York business +two years ago, and it's taken all my strength to buck up against it till +now. I reckon maybe it'll carry me along all right--now." + +"You're in the same line that I am, I understand," said Justin, who had +been eating while the other talked. + +"Why, yes, you might call it that, I guess both machines started in +Connecticut. A cousin of mine owned one, he said Warford stole his idea +and got it patented first--I don't know. When he died he left me what +money he had, and I took up the concern. I've got a Yankee side to me as +well as a Southern side; sometimes I get tuckered out tryin' to combine +'em." + +"You say that trade is looking up now?" asked Justin. + +"Well, yes, it is. The public is beginning to learn the value of time as +recorded by the timoscript." His eyes twinkled. "Our machine is put +together better than the Warford. I feel it my duty to say that, Mr. +Alexander. It's simpler, for one thing--there ain't so many little cogs +to catch and get out of order. No complex mechanism; a child can run +it--that's what my circulars say. I believe in advertising, same as you; +I don't object to your booming trade. The more people there are, now, +who know there is a time-machine, the more there'll be to find they've +had a long-felt want for one, no matter what you call it. And--you +shouldn't hurry over your luncheon so, Mr. Alexander," for Justin had +thrown down his napkin and was rising. + +"I've got to be back at the office by two," said Justin, glancing at the +clock, which showed five minutes of the hour. + +"Oh, you can walk it in three minutes; but of course you're not down to +that yet. I'm glad to have met up with you, sir, and I hope to see you +often. I reckon this town's big enough for two of a kind." + +"Thank you," said Justin, glad to escape. He had been telling himself +during the conversation that he would take care to avoid Mr. Angevin L. +Cater's favorite haunt for the future, but he was surprised to find a +change gradually stealing over him after he had left the man. There are +some persons, distinctly agreeable at first, whose absence materializes +an unexpected aversion to their further acquaintance; others, whose +company one has found tedious, leave a wholesome flavor, after all, +behind them. Mr. Cater appeared to be of the latter class. Justin found +himself smiling with real kindness once or twice as he thought of his +opposite neighbor. + +But there was little time for turning aside during the afternoon--the +evening as well as the morning were component parts of that golden day. +The orders that came in gave a wonderful effect of luck, although they +were largely the legitimate outcome of well-planned efforts. Justin +thought the work of the last six months was bringing its fulfillment +now, but this clear stream of accomplishment showed him the way to a +mighty ocean. Power, power, power! The sense of it was in his +finger-ends as he focused his mind on world-embracing schemes; with that +impelling current of strength, he could have turned even failure to +success, and he knew it. + +The hours were all too short for transacting the business that had to be +done, and for all the consultations as to ways and means. It would take +some time to put these preparations on a larger scale. + +Justin was ready to leave at six o'clock, with a bundle of price-lists +under his arm to look over when he got home. The last mail was handed to +him just as he was locking his desk. + +"There is no use in my looking over these to-night, Harker," he said. +"You can get at them the first thing in the morning. I will be down even +earlier than to-day. Stay--" His eye had caught sight of an envelope +with the name of a well-known Chicago firm on it. He tore it open, ran +his eye rapidly over the contents, and then handed it, with a gesture as +of abdication, to Harker. The bookkeeper was the first to break the +silence. + +"I thought we were getting along pretty rapidly to-day," he said, "but +it seems that we haven't even started. This tops all! We'll have to get +a big move on, Mr. Alexander. They're giving us very short time." + +"Yes," said Justin. He lingered irresolutely, and then laid down his +papers with the hat which he held ready to put on, and went over to the +safe. He took from it five new ten-dollar bills and tucked them into his +waistcoat pocket. They sent a glow to his heart, for they were intended +as a little gift to his wife; it seemed to him that this last good +fortune had given him the right to make her a visible sharer in it. + +As he ran up the steps of his home, he collided with a small boy who was +holding a bicycle with one hand and proffering a yellow envelope through +the open doorway with an outstretched arm. Lois was taking it. She and +Justin read the telegram at the same moment, before it fell fluttering +to the ground between them, as both hands dropped it. + +"I cannot possibly go," he said, staring at her. + +"Oh, Justin! I will, then--some one _must_." + +"No, no, _you_ can't; that's nonsense. Great heavens! for this to come +at such a time!" He broke off again, staring helplessly before him. +Leverich was in St. Louis, Martin at his home ill. "Why didn't the girl +start last week, as she intended?" + +"Oh, the poor child--don't blame _her_. The accident must have been so +terrible!" + +"Yes--yes, indeed." He sat down in the hall chair, while his wife signed +the telegraph-book which the boy incidentally held open for her as he +chewed gum. When she finished, she saw that Justin was pouring over the +time-table in an evening paper; he laid it down to say: + +"If I start back for town in ten minutes I can catch the eight-thirty +train south, and get home again to-morrow night or the morning after, if +Theodosia is able to travel. That will only make me lose one day." One +day! He shook his head in bitter impatience. + +"Oh, I hate to have you go in this way! Shall I send word to the office +for you?" + +"No; I'll write some telegrams on the way in. I'll run up-stairs and put +a few things in the bag, and kiss the children good night--I hear them +calling." He put his hand in his pocket and hurriedly drew out the crisp +roll of bills, and looked at them ruefully. + +"I brought this money for you, Lois, but I'll have to take it with me, +I'm afraid, for I might run short." He put his arm around her for a +brief instant, in answer to her exclamation. "No, don't get me anything +to eat; I haven't time, I tell you. I'll get what I want later, on the +train." In the strong irritation which he was curbing he felt as if he +would never want to eat again. He was in reality by nature both kind and +compassionate, but the worst sting of trouble lies often in the fact +that it is so inopportune. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +"Are we near New York?" + +"Yes," said Justin, smiling encouragement at his young companion. He +stood up and took down from the rack above them Dosia's jacket, which +had been reclaimed from the wreck soaked and torn, and a boy's cap in +lieu of her missing hat. + +"You had better put these on now, and then you can rest again for a +little while before we have to move." + +It was unavoidable that after the enforced journey the sight of Dosia's +white face and imploring eyes should have filled him with a rush of +tender compassion which completely blotted out the previous reluctance +from his memory. Few men spend their time regretting past stages of +thought, and he had naturally accepted her tremulous thankfulness for +his solicitude. + +After the long day of travel in Justin's company, the color had begun to +return faintly to Dosia's lips and cheeks. She was also growing to feel +a little more at home with him; he had seemed too much a stranger and +she had been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. +He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in numberless ways, and +thoughtful of her comfort, and always smiled encouragingly when he +looked at her. Now, at the journey's end, he began to talk, in a secret +restlessness which he could not own. His mind had been busy all day with +the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but as he neared home he +could not shake off a haunting premonition of something unpleasant to +come. + +"Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting the new +cousin," he said. + +"Will they?" asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. "But they will be +looking out for you as well as for me." + +"Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. But I was wrong in +saying that both children would be up, for it will be nearly seven when +we reach the house, and they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be +there. I hope you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at +our house." + +"I love children," said Dosia, with the solemnity of a profession of +faith. + +"I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl who has her +hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and the rest of it straggles +around in light wisps, or is gathered into an inconceivably small +pigtail at the back of her neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, +little white teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and +wisdom, because at the age of six she is the eldest daughter--and that +means a great deal, you know." + +"Oh," said Dosia, "I am an 'eldest daughter.'" She choked, momentarily, +as she thought of the family at home. "Was it only last night that you +started for me?" she asked, after a pause during which she had looked +hard out of the car-window. + +"Yes; I've made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky that we could +catch that eight-thirty express this morning; if we hadn't it would have +put us back nearly twenty-four hours--and that would have been bad," he +added under his breath. + +"Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one day," said Dosia +timidly. She felt somehow away outside of his inner thought, as if she +had no inherent place in his mind at all. "You are just starting in +business, aren't you?" + +"Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new ventures--Dosia and +the typometer appear on the scene at the same moment, starting out on a +career together; and for this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is +all. I hope we'll both be equally successful." + +"Yes, indeed." She responded to his smile, and tried to rally her +failing powers. + +"I am very glad I went for you." He regarded her with anxiety. "You +could not have made the journey alone." + +"Oh, I could have--but I am so glad you came!" said Dosia. She leaned +against the window, with closed eyes, to rest--her wan face, her dress, +crumpled and stained, the negligence of her hair, which she had been +unable to arrange properly, and her air of fatigue making a pitiful +contrast to the girl who had started out so gayly on her travels in her +trim attire two days before. Now, as in many another moment of silence, +she felt once more the hurtling fall, the pressure of darkness, and the +ravages of the rain and wind; the nightmare horror of the wreck was upon +her; only the remembered clasp of a hand held her reason firm. She had +spent half the day in thinking of that unknown friend, and the thought +seemed to put her under some obligation of high and pure living, in a +cloistered gratitude. A girl who had been saved in that way ought to be +worthy of it. Some day or other--some day--it must be meant that she +should meet him again and tell him what his help had been to her. She +imagined herself engaged in some errand of mercy--supporting the +tottering footsteps of an old woman as she crossed a crowded street, or +carrying a little sick child, or kneeling by a fever-touched bedside in +a tenement-house, or encouraging a terror-stricken creature through +smoke and fire. She would meet him thus, and when he said, "How good and +brave you are!" she might look up and say: "I learned it from you. Do +you remember the girl you helped the night the train was wrecked? I am +she." And when he asked, "How did you know it was I?" she would answer: +"By the tones of your voice; I would know that anywhere." And then he +would take her hand again---- + +Her eyes ached with unshed tears at the lost comfort of it. She tried to +see his form through the blur of darkness that had enveloped it,--a +swinging step, a square set of the shoulders, an effect of strong young +manhood,--and she pictured his face as noble and beautiful as his care +for her. Her reverie passed through different grades. She found herself +after a while idly scanning Justin's face and wondering if it embodied +all that was high and good to her cousin Lois; after one was married a +long time, say six or seven years, did it still matter how a man looked? +She felt herself a little in awe of his keen blue eyes, in spite of his +kindness; she thought she preferred a dark man. + +She clung to Justin's arm at the crossings and ferry, and hardly heard +his words, bewildered by the unaccustomed sights and sounds and the +weakness of her knees. Her feet slipped on the cobblestones, the +hurrying people made her dizzy, and the electric lights danced before +her eyes. + +As they were standing on the boat, two men came up to speak to Justin; +she gathered that they had heard of the accident and of his journey from +Mrs. Alexander at the whist club the night before, and stopped now to +make courteous inquiries. One, who was short and stout, with a pleasant +if commonplace face, passed on, after his introduction to Dosia; but the +other turned back, as he was following, to say: + +"By the way, I see that there was a fire in your new quarters to-day, +Alexander." + +"A fire! For Heaven's sake, Barr----" + +"Oh, I don't think it amounted to much; there's just a line in the +evening paper about it. Here, read for yourself--'fire confined to one +floor, machinery slightly damaged.' Insured, weren't you?" + +"Oh, yes, yes--that isn't the point now. We can't afford to be kept back +a minute! I'm glad you told me; I must go--I must go back at once and +see for myself." He stopped and looked hopelessly at Dosia. + +Short as the journey was now, he could not let her continue it by +herself; yet every fiber in him was quivering in his wild desire to get +over to the scene of disaster. He looked at his informant, who, in his +turn, was regarding the girl beside Justin. + +"I can go on by myself," said Dosia, divining his thought, and wondering +when this terrible journey would ever end. "Truly, I can. I know you +want to go and see about the fire; please, please do! Oh, please!" + +"Barr, will you take charge of Miss Linden?" asked Justin abruptly. He +did not particularly like Barr, but this was an emergency. "Will you +take her to Mrs. Alexander?" + +"I will, indeed," said the newcomer, with responsive earnestness. + +"Very well, then; I'll go back on this boat. I'll be out on a later +train, tell Lois." He started to make his way to the other end of the +boat, to be in readiness for the return trip, and turned back once more +to give the girl her ticket; then he was lost to sight, and Theodosia +was left, for the third time, on the hands of an unknown man. + +This one only spoke to give her the necessary directions as they joined +the usual rush for the train, and refrained from talking, to her great +relief, after he had settled her comfortably in the car for the last +half-hour of traveling. She leaned against the window-casing, as before, +as far away from him as possible, suddenly and wretchedly aware of her +dilapidated appearance and the boy's cap that covered the fair hair +curling out from under it. Her cheeks were whiter than ever, and the +corners of her mouth had the pathetic droop of extreme fatigue. + +She looked, without knowing it, very young, very forlorn, and very +frightened, and the hand in which she held the ticket given her by +Justin trembled. She was morbidly afraid that this new person would +question her as to the accident, about which she shrank from speaking; +but after a while, encouraged by his silence, she tried to turn her +thoughts by stealthily observing him. + +If her friend of the voice and hand of the night before had been only a +tall blur in the darkness, the man beside her was effectively concrete. +Neither tall nor large, he gave an impression of strength and vitality +in the ease and quickness of his motions, which bespoke trained muscles. +She decided that he was rather old--perhaps thirty. Dark-skinned, +black-haired, with a thin face, a low forehead, deep-set eyes, a high, +rather hooked nose, and a mustache, he was somewhat of the Oriental +type, although, as she learned later, a New Englander by birth and +heritage. Dosia was not quite sure whether the effect was pleasing or +the reverse; there seemed to be something about him different from the +other men she had seen, even in his clothing, although it was plain +enough. + +Interspersed with these observations were the increasing throbs of +homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Kind as Justin had been, +she had felt all the time outside of his thought and affection. This new +companion had shown consideration for her; she was grateful for it, but +she was unprepared to have him lean suddenly toward her, as a tear +trembled perilously on her lashes, and say, with twinkling eyes: + +"I beg your pardon, but do I look like him?" + +"Like--like whom?" asked Dosia, in amazement. + +"Like a person to be approved of." + +"I haven't considered the subject," said Dosia, with swift dignity. + +"Ah, you see, it's the reverse with me. As soon as Mrs. Alexander told +me she was expecting you, my mind was filled with visions of a sweet +young thing from the South. All sweet young things from the South have +dreams; mine was to embody yours. And when I saw you, I said to +myself--I beg your pardon, do you think I am getting too personal, on +such short acquaintance?" + +"Yes," answered Dosia, dimpling in spite of herself, "very much too +personal." She turned her head away from him, that she might not see +those sparkling, quizzical eyes so close. + +"Very well; I will finish the sentence to-morrow, as you suggest. In the +meantime, let me ask you if you have ever made a collection of +conductors' thumbs?" + +"No!" said Dosia, in astonishment, turning around again to face him. + +"I am told that there is a great deal of character in them; it is given +by the broad, free movement of punching tickets. I have thought of +collecting thumbs for purposes of study--in alcohol, of course. But why +do you look so surprised?" + +"I am surprised that you have no collection already," said Dosia, with +spirit; "you seem to be so enterprising." + +He shook his head sadly. "No. How little you know me! I'm not +enterprising in the least; I have no heroic virtues, I'm only--loving." + +"Oh!" cried Dosia, and stopped short in a ripple of merriment that was +more invigorating than wine, and that brought a rush of color to her +cheeks. + +"No? well, not until the day after to-morrow, then, if you say so. +You're so very, very good to me, Miss Linden; it's not often I find +anyone so considerate as you are. And have you come up North to make +your entrance into society?" + +"I have come North to study music," said Theodosia impressively. + +"Music! Ah, there you have me." He spoke with a new soberness. + +"Do you like it?" + +"I like it almost better than anything else in the world--too much, and +yet not enough, after all." He shook his head with a quick, somber +gesture. "I'll help you with the music, if you'll let me. Did you notice +how very quickly we became acquainted? Yes? I know now why; it puzzled +me at first. It was the music in you to which I responded--I can tell +you just what little song of Schubert's your smile is from, if you'll +give me time." + +"No," said Dosia, "it isn't from Schubert at all, and you'll never find +the key-note to it, so you needn't try." She could not help daring a +little, in her girlishness. + +He laughed. "Oh, I shall make it my business to find out. For what else +what I constituted your guardian at the beginning of your career? And +it's so good of you to say that I can come to-morrow and pour out my +heart to you! Shall it be at five? No, please don't trouble to answer; I +like to look at your ear in that position--it's so pearly. Too personal +again? Then let us converse about your Old Kentucky Home." + +"It isn't in Kentucky," interpolated Dosia desperately, but there was no +stopping him. He was so irrelevantly absurd that she succumbed at last +entirely, and hardly knew when they left the train; when they walked up +the path to her cousin's door, they were both laughing causelessly and +irresponsibly, in delightful comradeship. + +He turned to Dosia after he had rung the bell and said, "Good night." + +"Aren't you coming in to see my cousin?" + +"Oh, yes; but this is our farewell. Please make it as touching as you +can." + +She looked up frankly as she gave him her hand and said: + +"Thank you for taking charge of me." + +"And making a fool of myself? It was in a good cause, at any rate. But +what I wanted you to say was----" + +She did not hear, for the door had opened, and he only waited a moment +inside the house to explain her husband's absence to Mrs. Alexander. The +news arrested her greeting to Dosia, whom she held tentatively by the +hand as she repeated: + +"Justin went back to the fire! Oh, I'm so sorry! Do you think that it +was very bad?" + +"The paper said not." + +"It must be out now, anyway. I'm so disappointed that he did not come +home, and I have such a nice little dinner. Will you not stay, Lawson?" + +"Thank you--I wish I could." There was a penetrative, lingering flash of +those still quizzical eyes at Dosia as he made his adieus, and then he +was gone. Why should she feel alone? + +Her cousin's arms were at last around her in welcome, the warmer for +being deferred; and the little Zaidee, whom she would have known from +Justin's description of her, was standing first on one tiptoe and then +on the other, waiting to be kissed before going off to bed, as she +announced. From above came the sound of small running feet, and a +child's voice calling: + +"Cousin Dosia--I want to see my Cousin Dosia!" A bare foot and leg +surmounted by a fluttering scrap of white raiment was thrust through the +balusters, followed by a protesting scream as his nurse heavily pursued +the fugitive with upraised voice: + +"Coom back, Reginald, coom back!" There was the noise of a scuffle as +Dosia, with her escort, laughingly ascended the stairs, to elicit a +shriek of terror and a rear view of the mercurial Reginald in full +flight for the nursery door, which banged after him, and behind which he +still raised his voice, to the shrill accompaniment of the nurse. + +"_I'll_ go in and keep him quiet," said Zaidee reassuringly, in answer +to her mother's look of appeal, and she also disappeared beyond the +prison bars, after a whisk of her short crisp pink skirt, and a smile at +Dosia in which her little white teeth gleamed in an infantile glee that +only accentuated her air of preternatural capability. + +Her cousin's kindly hands helped Dosia to remove the traces of travel, +when she had definitely refused the offer pressed upon her to be +undressed and go to bed and have her dinner brought up to her. It was +sweet to be in feminine care once more, and be pitied for the terrors +she had undergone, and feel the bond of relationship assert itself in +spite of the fact that the cousins had not seen each other since Dosia's +early childhood. She did not want to be alone up-stairs, and sat instead +in Justin's place at the table, clad in a soft silken tea-gown of Lois' +that was in itself restful, trying to eat and drink and keep up her part +in the conversation about her journey and the absent members of the +family. Changes had crowded so upon poor Dosia that she felt as if she +were living in a kaleidoscope that rattled her every minute or two into +a new position; the glittering table and her cousin's form would +presently dissolve, and leave her perhaps out in the crowded, unknown +streets, with wild-eyed faces pressing near her. + +After all, she only changed to an arm-chair in the little drawing-room, +with her head against a cushion and her feet on a foot-stool, and her +cousin still beside her, pulling back the window-curtains once in a +while to take a peep outside for her missing husband; in spite of the +real kindness of her welcome, Dosia felt a certain preoccupation in it. +Her coming was only accessory to the real importance of his, when she +herself should have been the event; the warmth of heart which she had +expected to feel toward her cousin somehow seemed to fail of expression +in this attitude. At the same time, Lois was also conscious of a lack of +response, a dullness, in Theodosia. Perhaps the likeness of relationship +was answerable for a certain reserve of manner, a formality which +neither knew how to break then or at a later time, and which was to last +until the barriers were swept away by a mighty flood; but the real cause +of the lack of sympathy lay in something much deeper. The strong thought +of self is inevitably insulating--it is as restrictive of human contact +as a live wire. Dosia, whose young life had all been spent in +unselfishness, was experiencing unexpectedly the other swing of the +pendulum in an intense and absorbing desire to have everything now as +she wanted it. She was tired of thinking of other people; the scene +should be set now for _her_. This desire was a huge mushroom growth, +sprung up in a night; it had no real root in her nature, and would +vanish as suddenly as it had come, but the shadow of it distorted her. + +The house was very much smaller than Dosia had imagined, and her eyes +roved over the little drawing-room in some perplexity, trying to make it +come up to her anticipation. All dwellers in small country places, where +economy is Heaven's first law, expect to be dazzled by the grandeur and +elegance of "the city." People in Balderville never dreamed of buying +new furniture from towns twenty or thirty miles away; as chair-legs +broke off, or rockers split, or tables came to pieces, all sorts of +domestic devices were resorted to by all but shiftless householders who +tamely submitted to ruin, in coaxing the article into seeming wholeness +and keeping it still in active use. The best families were learned in +all the little ways and capabilities of string and wire, and wooden +cleats and old hinges and tacks, and pieces of tin cut from tomato-cans, +and in the glueing on of piano-keys, black-walnut excrescences, +ornaments, and sofa-arms. + +Mended furniture has, however, a deprecating expression of its own, not +to be concealed by any art. Dosia recognized the absence of it in these +trim chairs that stood nattily on their slender curved legs, in the +little shining tables which did not require to be hidden by a hanging +cloth, and in the china and bric-a-brac placed boldly where they could +be seen on all sides. She wondered a little at the low wicker arm-chair +in which she was sitting, for they had wicker furnishings in the +Balderville hotel, but the blue-skyed water-color sketches on the walls +caught her fancy, and the vista of a blue-and-white dining-room, seen +through half-closed reddish portieres, was charming. For all the shine +and polish and multiplicity of small ornaments in the tiny apartment, it +seemed to lack a kind of comfort to which she was used, and of which she +had caught a glimpse in the sitting-room as she passed it. She gave an +exclamation of delight as her eyes fell on a stand in one corner of the +room on which was a long glass filled with pink roses. + +"How beautiful these are! I haven't seen any finer ones in Balderville, +and you know we are famed for our roses there." + +"Oh," said Lois, "to think that you have been in the house for over an +hour and I never told you about them! Justin's not coming upset +everything. They were sent to you this afternoon." + +"Sent to _me_?" + +"Yes--by Mr. Sutton. Didn't you say you met him with Justin on the +boat?--a short, stout man with sandy hair." + +"Yes, Justin introduced him, but he hardly spoke to me." + +"That doesn't make any difference, he sent them before he saw you at +all. I told him you were coming, and these arrived this afternoon. You +needn't feel particularly flattered; he sends them to everybody." + +"Sends them to everybody!" Dosia looked amazed. + +"Oh, yes; he's rich, and devoted to girls. They laugh at him, but I +notice that they are quite ready to accept his flowers and candy and +tickets for the opera. I believe that he wants to get married; but he +really is sensible and quite nice underneath it all." + +"Oh!" said Dosia, indefinably revolted. "And--and is Mr. Barr like that, +too?" + +"Who, Lawson? Oh, dear, no; he can't even support himself, let alone +sending presents." + +"He said such queer things," ventured Dosia, with a shy desire to talk +about him. "I did not know what to make of it at first." + +"Oh, nobody pays any attention to what Lawson says," said Lois +indifferently. + +Dosia longed to ask why, with an instant wave of resentment at this way +of speaking; a cloud seemed suddenly to have descended upon the +glittering possibilities of her future. She fixed her eyes on her +cousin, who sat in a high, slender chair, one arm gowned in yellow silk +thrown over the back of it, and her cheek upon her arm--her rich +coloring, the grace of her attitude, the sweep of her long black skirt, +made a deep impression on the mind of the little country girl, who +seemed slight and meager and insignificant to herself. And this other +woman had been loved--she had passed through all the experiences to +which Dosia looked forward. Was it that which gave her this charm thrown +over her like a gauzy veil? + +"What a beautiful waist you have on!" she exclaimed impulsively. "Yellow +is such a lovely color." + +"Do you think so?" said Lois. "This is an old thing that I mended to +wear because Justin always likes it. I do wish he'd come." She rose and +walked restlessly to the window. "I'm worried about him." + +"Yes," said Dosia, still looking, and pleased that the remark bore out +her fancy. But she wondered; married women in Balderville looked +different--the hot Southern sun had burned the color out of their +cheeks, and the gowns they mended were of cotton, not of yellow silk; +this fresh youthfulness and self-sufficiency both attracted and +repelled, it seemed so beyond her. Her heart bounded at the thought that +Aunt Theodosia had sent money for her clothes as well as for her music +lessons. + +She did not resist the second attempt to send her to bed, although +Justin was still absent. Lois had brought her all the things she needed +in the absence of her wrecked luggage, and kissed her good night with +tenderness, saying, "I hope you'll be very happy here, Dosia," and she +answered, "Thank you so much for having me." + +In spite of her helpless fatigue, she lay awake for a long time in her +tiny room. The brass bed, the polished floor with the crimson rug on it, +the dainty dressing-table, had all seemed charmingly luxurious and like +a book, but now that she was in darkness, she only saw vividly a pair of +sparkling eyes looking into hers, and caught the sound of a kind, +half-mocking voice. Every word of the conversation repeated itself again +to her excited mind; it was delightful to remember, because she had +acquitted herself so well; if she had replied stupidly she would have +died of vexation now. How clever he had been, and how really +considerate!--for she was glad to think that he had said foolish things +to her to keep her from breaking down. + +"Do I look like a person of whom you would approve?" + +"I haven't considered the subject." She flashed the answer back again, +and laughed, with her cheek glowing on the pillow. Why had Lois spoken +of him so strangely? She vainly strove to fathom the significance of the +words, which she resented, although they had coincided with an +instinctive feeling she had that he was not at all the kind of man she +would ever want to marry. She had already taken that provisionary leap +into a mythical future which is one of the perfunctory attitudes of +maidenhood. + +But who wanted to think of marrying now, anyway? That was something so +far off that it seemed like the end of all things to Dosia, who at +present only innocently desired plenty of emotions to live +upon--costlier living than she knew, poor child! The very instinct that +warned her against it added a heightened charm to the perilous pleasure. +And the other man--Mr. Sutton--had already sent her flowers! Oh, this +was life, life--the life she had read of and longed for, where dark eyes +looked at you and made you feel how interesting you were; where you +could have pretty clothes, and look like other people, and be brilliant +and witty and sought after. She blushed with pleasure and excitement. +Then she said a little prayer, with palm pressed to palm under the +covers, and the glamour faded away as a sweet and pure feeling welled up +from the clear depths of her heart. Her hand was once more held in +safety. In her drowsiness, it was as if she had lifted her soft cheek to +be kissed. + +To the eager inquiries of Lois, Justin answered that he had had his +dinner long before and wanted nothing. + +He asked if she and the children were all right,--his usual +question,--and she waited until he had dropped down in the arm-chair in +the sitting-room up-stairs, after changing his shoes for slippers, +before questioning him. Then she sat down by him and asked: + +"Well, how was it?" + +She spoke with eagerness, holding one of his hands in hers tenderly, +although it hung limp after the first strong, responsive clasp. + +"The fire was out before I got there." + +"Do they know how it started?" + +"Not yet." + +"Was the place burned much?" + +"No, not much." + +"Did it do any damage to the machinery?" + +"Some." + +Lois looked at him in despair. + +"Aren't you going to tell me _anything_?" + +"There really isn't anything to tell, dear." He strove to speak with +attention. "You know just about as much of it all as I do." + +"Oh, but I'm so sorry for you! Will it put you back any?" + +"I suppose so." + +"Oh, _dear_!" she moaned helplessly. "Isn't it too bad! If only you had +not been obliged to take that journey! Do you suppose it would have +happened if you had stayed at home?" + +"I really can't tell. The fire might have been discovered earlier; it +started at noon, when most of the clerks were out at lunch." + +"I see. But no one can hold you responsible." + +"I am responsible for everything. If you do not mind, Lois, I'll go to +bed. I'm tired; I didn't get any sleep last night." + +"Yes, of course." She smoothed his hair with her fingers in remorseful +tenderness, leaning against him, with her laces touching his cheek. +"Such a long, long, tiresome journey! It's such a pity you had to go." + +"Oh, well, I had to, and that's the end of it. Don't let's talk about it +any more. I hope that poor girl gets some sleep to-night; she needs it. +She can't hear us, can she?" + +"No. Didn't you think she was sweet?" + +"Yes, she seemed nice enough; she's pretty--a little stupid, perhaps." + +"Oh, poor Dosia!" said Lois, "stupid! I should think she might have +been, after all she had gone through. But then, you're so used to my +cleverness!" She looked up at him with provocative eyes, into which he +smiled faintly, in recognition of what was expected of him; then he +said, with a sudden appealing change of tone, "I'm _very_ tired, Lois." + +She kissed him good night tenderly, with magnanimous concession to his +unresponsiveness; there was no room for her in his thoughts to-night, +and she had been so longing to see him! But she would tell him all about +it to-morrow. + +Justin laid his head upon the pillow, but his eyes burned into the +darkness; there was a proud and bitter disappointment at his heart, even +while reason adjusted his losses to their proper place. Before him in +disagreeable force came the face of Leverich, and it was not the face of +a man to whom one would care to make excuse or from whom one would +challenge reproof; he could see the heavy jowl, the piercing eyes, the +half-pompous, half-shrewd expression of one who respected nothing but +success. This tangle up of the machinery, unusual and costly in its +parts and appointments--Heaven only knew what far-reaching complications +the delay of its repair might occasion! Justin had seen only too well in +others how a false step at the first may count. + +Whether or not Dosia and the typometer were united in their destinies, +they had at least one thing in common--they were both embarked upon +perilous ways. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +Joseph Leverich, however, proved unexpectedly kind and sympathetic when +Justin approached him on the latter's return from the West. Justin had +written to him, and then had been incidentally reenforced by the +assistance of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. Bullen, the foreman, was versed in +practical knowledge of the machinery, and how to go to work about +repairs; different portions had to be sent for to all parts of the +country. Justin pored over catalogues, and checked off and figured, and +tried to find ready-made substitutes wherever he could for those they +ordinarily manufactured for the typometer. Here Cater, who had worked up +gradually into the manufacturing of his own machine, was of great use. + +"You never can find anything just as you want it," he conceded, +encouragingly, to Justin, "but you can whittle off here and there, and +make it do. I had to get along that way at first. You can manage pretty +well, only there isn't any real certainty to it. I got sort of +weary"--he pronounced it "weery"--"of sending for steel bars to fit, and +then getting a consignment of 'em just two sizes too large, with a +polite note saying that they were out of what I wanted, but thought it +was best, at any rate, to send me what they had. You don't want to buck +up against that kind of thing too often--not for your own good. So I +started up the machinery, and even that goes back on you sometimes." + +"Mine has," said Justin grimly. + +"Oh, I don't mean that way--it's in the way it turns out the stuff. You +get so cussed mi-nute nothing seems quite right to you. You get kinder +soured even on the material in the rough; the grain is wrong in this, +and that hasn't been worked sufficient, and that t'other weighs too +light." + +"How long do you guarantee the typometer for?" + +"For a year." + +"We stake out ours for two,--go you one better,--but it's all rot. You +can't guarantee nothin' in this world; I know that isn't grammar, but it +kinder seems to mean more'n if 'twas. You can't guarantee nothin', not +unless you could have the making of the raw material, and then you +couldn't. And you can't guarantee your workmen, especially when you have +to keep changing; I reckon human imperfection's got to step in +somewhere. Talk of skilled labor! That's what takes the blood out of a +man, the everlasting wrench of trying to get 'skilled labor' that is +skilled. Some of it is so loose-jawed it can't even chew straight." + +"You're a pessimist," said Justin, smiling. + +The other broke into a responsive grin. + +"Yes, I reckon that's so; but I don't even guarantee to be that, steady. +Sometimes I get kinder mushy and pleasant, and think the world ain't a +closed-up oyster,--Shakespeare,--but just nice soft cream-cheese that's +ready to be spooned up when you want it. Those are the sort of spells a +man's got to look out for, or he's likely to find himself up against the +rocks, without even an oyster-shell in sight." + +"That's a bad position," said Justin, and Cater nodded confirmatively. +After a moment he said: + +"Well, I'll guarantee _that_; I've been there." As he was going, he +asked: "How's Miss Dosia? Pretty well shook up, I suppose." + +"Oh, she's all right now," said Justin. "She's been resting for a couple +of days. You must come and see her; she will be glad to see a face from +home." + +"I reckon I'll wait awhile," said Cater, "till a face from home's more +of a novelty. She ain't hankering for a sight of mine now." And, indeed, +Dosia, on being informed of the prospect, showed no great enthusiasm. +Balderville and the people there were so far away in the past that she +had lost connection with them. + +And, after all, Leverich met Justin's explanation cordially. + +"Oh, you couldn't help a thing like that," he said. "Don't know yet how +the fire started, do they? Accidents are bound to occur when you least +look for them. The loss was fully covered, wasn't it?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"I'm glad the orders came in, anyway. Just bluff those fellows off a +bit--tell 'em you've got a lot more orders on and _they've_ got to wait; +that's the way to do it." + +"Oh, yes, I know that; the only thing I want is to be sure, myself, when +the orders can be filled. I'm trying to get the machinery at work as +soon as possible, and we're sending all over the country for what we +need. Cater--he's the manufacturer of the timoscript, across the street, +has told me of a place where they make small steel bars such as we use. +I've brought the catalogue with me. I sent for a consignment of them +yesterday; Bullen says they'll do." + +"Yes, that's all right," said Leverich. "Oh, you'll get along, you'll +get along! I knew you wouldn't sit down and wait until I came home to +get on your feet. Don't mind drawing on us for extra money if you need +it--and we want to get in for the export trade. What do you think of +this?" He took some papers out of his desk and began explaining them to +Justin, who listened attentively before making suggestions. His mind, +although not unusually quick, was singularly clear and comprehensive; he +brought to Leverich's aid, if not the intelligence of the expert, +something which is often harder to get, and which Leverich was +experienced enough to appreciate at its full value--the intelligence +which sees the matter from the standpoint of the big outer world, and +not only from the inner radius of a little circle. Justin's vision was +not, as yet, impeded by the technicalities and preconceived opinions +which often obstruct the fresh point of view even in very clever men +whose talent it is to see clearly. + +"We haven't made any mistake in getting you," he said to Justin, as they +parted. + +The belated fifty dollars were carried to Lois that night, with a +subdued joy in the glad provision of more to come. They were still to +live on as little as they could, but the idea of the limit stretched to +include those extra fives and tens whose expenditure was in the interest +of true economy. + +For a few days after her arrival Theodosia had kept her bed, in a +reaction from the strain of the journey that made her too weak to care +to do anything but lie in a half-drowsing and peaceful condition, +hearing the sound of the children's voices as if they were very far off. +Lois brought up the dainty meals herself, and talked the little talk +women use on such occasions, and at four o'clock each afternoon Zaidee +appeared with a tiny lacquered tray on which stood an egg-shell cup +filled with fragrant tea, and a biscuit, and watched Dosia, as she ate +and drank, with benignant satisfaction. The younger Reginald was still +afraid and was lured near her bedside only to rush off again; but with +Zaidee there was a loving comradeship. + +It was well that Dosia had even lost interest in Mr. Barr's call the +next afternoon, for he did not come, and afterwards she grew ashamed +that she had harbored the interest at all. Mr. Sutton, after sending +more flowers, had departed for Boston. + +But, after this convalescence, by the end of the week Dosia emerged, +eager, alert, with pink cheeks and gleaming eyes, having passed through +some subtle transformation, and bent on pleasure. She was rather silent, +indeed, except when carried away by sudden excitement, but she was +rapturously happy at the prospect of a concert and a card-party and a +large bazaar to be given soon; the concert and the bazaar were both for +charity, and she was already engaged to serve at the flower-booth in the +latter; there was to be dancing after the closing of both +entertainments. + +Clothes were the first requisite, after a definite arrangement had been +made to begin the music lessons in two weeks' time. Every little +preparation was a source of delight to Dosia, who thought Lois wonderful +as a designer and adapter of fashions suitable to her purse, and the +older woman threw herself into this work with a sort of fierce ardor. + +[Illustration: _Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction_] + +Dosia had never seen so much ready money spent in her life, and had +never heard so much talk about it--why should she, in a place where no +one bought anything, where long-outstanding bills for tiny sums were +paid for mostly in lumber, or chickens, or cotton? Here the price of +daily living and clothing and amusements was one of the stock topics in +the intimate round of suburban dwellers. Women came to visit her cousin +Lois who at times made it their sole subject of conversation, +incidentally submitting the very garments they wore to appraisal, for +the pleasure of springing an unexpected price in her face like a +jack-in-the-box, at which she was to jump admiringly. Lois declaimed +against the habit, even while she sometimes fell a victim to it, and +Dosia found herself drawn into the same ways, after a delightful revel +in shopping for new clothes with Aunt Theodosia's money. The chief +requisite in any article bought was that it should look to be worth more +than was paid for it. + +What most impressed Dosia in the big city was, not the size of it, nor +the height of the buildings, nor the magnificence of the shops--she +accepted these wonders, indeed, with the provoking acquiescence which +dwellers in outlying sections of the country display when confronted +with the reality they have seen so often depicted. It was the crowd, the +rush of the people, the tense expression on the faces, that struck her +with amazement; everyone looked in grim haste to get somewhere, and +forged ahead untiringly with set and definite purpose, as if there were +not a minute to lose. Dosia had been used to sauntering aimlessly, and +to seeing everyone else saunter. There was no hurry at Balderville, +except in Northern people on their first arrival, and they soon lost it. +Dosia clung to Lois' arm on their first excursion, but the next time she +suddenly dropped the arm and forged ahead breathlessly, being caught, as +she was crossing a street, by a policeman just in time to escape being +run over by an electric car. When Lois came up to her, horrified and +indignant, the girl was laughing in wild exhilaration. + +"Oh, it's such fun!" she said. "I'm going to walk like the other people +after this; but I'll stop when I get to the crossings, so you needn't +mind." People turned around to look at the pretty girl with the hair +blown back from her face, standing still in the street and laughing. The +excitement was all part of the first intoxication of the new life. + +In the intervals of going to town, there were calls to be received, some +from married women, and some from young girls who were asked especially +to meet Dosia, and who expressed pleasure that she was to spend the +winter with them. She was asked to join a book club and a card club, and +to pour tea at the next meeting of the Junior Guild--proceedings that at +the first blush appeared radiantly festive. It was understood that she +was to be of the inner circle. + +When the other functions took place, Dosia was a success both at the +concert and the bazaar; a score of youths were introduced to her, with +whom she laughed and chatted and promenaded and danced; she danced every +time. The society of a new place is apt to appear extraordinarily +attractive until one begins to resolve it into its component parts, when +it is seen to differ but little from that one has hitherto known. Of +these dancing youths, Dosia was yet to realize that half of them were +younger even than she; some who seemed to take a great fancy for her +were the bores whom all the other girls got rid of, if possible; others +were just a little below the grade of real refinement; the really nice +fellows were not there at all, with the exception of a stray few, and +those who were attendant on their fiancees. Just at present the rhythm +of the music and the joy of motion were all in all to Dosia. Her honest +and artless pleasure shone so plainly from her face that for the moment +it was a compelling attraction in itself--for the moment, as neither +good looks, nor honesty, nor the artlessness of joy in one's own +pleasure, serve as a power of fascination: it takes a subtler quality, +combined of both sympathy and reserve--something always given, something +always withheld. + +This happiness of healthy youth, which as yet depended on no individual +note, could last but such a brief time! When she looked back upon it, it +seemed like a little sunny, transfigured place that somebody else had +lived in--the Dosia who was just glad. + +Lois watched her enjoyment, half preoccupied, yet smilingly, pleased +with the girl's prettiness and success. Dosia thought, "How kind she +is!" and yet, when another woman came to her and said, with warm +impulsiveness, "My dear child, it's a pleasure to look at you!" she felt +that she had now the one thing she had missed. + +She went to the last evening of the bazaar clad in a floating blue gown +that matched her eyes. The curve of her arms, bare to the elbow, the way +the tendrils of her hair fell across her forehead, her sudden dimpling +smile, the glad, unconscious motions of her beautiful youth, would have +made her, to those who loved, the personification of darling maidenhood, +with that haunting tinge of pathos which is the inheritance of the +woman-child. + +She sold more flowers than any other girl at the bazaar that night, and +there she met Mr. Sutton, who had, indeed, called upon her, but at a +time when she was out. This guaranteed man was rather short, stocky, and +common-place-looking, with a large, round, beardless face, and a long, +newly shaven upper lip. But his appearance made no difference; Dosia's +radiant happiness flowed over on him with impartial delight, and if she +sold many flowers, it was he who bought most of them, presenting them to +her again afterwards, so that one corner of the room was heaped up with +her spoils, and her arms were full of roses. She trailed around the +crowded room with him in her blue gown, as he had insisted on her advice +in buying, and received gifts of books and candy in the interests of +organized charity. It was like being in the Arabian Nights to have +inconsequent gifts showered upon one in this way, but she succeeded in +dissuading him from offering her a large green and pink flowered plaque +of local art, and was relieved when he gave it to the lady who had it +for sale. + +"A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden," he said +apologetically. "Each lady makes me promise--weeks beforehand--to come +and buy from her especial table. If they would only have something I +_could_ want,"--he looked at her humorously,--"it would be easy enough +to keep my word. Why don't they ever sell things a man can use? But look +for yourself, Miss Linden--it's charity to help me out." He paused +irresolutely by a yellow-draped table. "Might you like some sewing-bags, +now, or this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of +these--plush arrangements?" + +"No!" said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, "I mightn't." + +"Or a doll, now?" He had strayed a step farther on. "Would you like a +doll for Mrs. Alexander's little girl, and some of these charming toys?" + +"Oh, how _lovely_ of you!" said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of +her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent +gratitude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon +the scene. George Sutton's seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He +was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had +been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had +been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and +living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied +Spanish in a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his life +to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to +give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea +that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before +asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret +that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young +woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his +glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his +sentimental remarks had been confided by one girl to another. But +further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. +Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it +permanently on one person. George Sutton's heart performed the pleasing +miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his +amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so +strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself +to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to +have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had +never made a bad bargain. + +Dosia's grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet +vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she +gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for +the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be +deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be +fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not +notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although +everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time +until the dancing began. + +Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not +learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had +been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished +perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements +of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn, +without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could +not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons +or of lambs could have propitiated the gods who presided over the +Terpsichorean art, Mr. Sutton's domestic altars would have been reeking +with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart +as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It +seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked +in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized +his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up +and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little +boy. + +It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in +the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held +in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She +watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather +wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and +darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever +the peculiar effect of being unlike other people--his overcoat hung +carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the +other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression +of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact +that he had lingered in her thought at all. + +He had been the subject of Lois' conversation on one of the afternoons +of Dosia's convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by +others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about +him, she was met by the casual answer, "Oh, everybody knows what Lawson +is." He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he +carried no weight, and there seemed to be social limitations which it +was an understood thing that he was not to pass. + +Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little country town of +his birth with a past such as places of the kind are too fatally apt to +fasten upon the boys who grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, +Heaven only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barr's idle youth +had been subject; and nobody in his new home had cared to hear. Scandal +may be interesting, but one instinctively avoids filth. It was an +understood thing, when he first came to Woodside, that his +brother-in-law, Joseph Leverich, had lifted him out of "a scrape" in +response to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy back +with him to get him away from village temptations and substitute the +more bracing conditions of city life, where entertainment that was not +vicious could be had. + +The experiment had apparently worked well; in the eight years which +Lawson Barr had passed in Woodside, no one had anything bad to tell of +him. He was more inclined to the society of men than of women, and +shared the imputation of being fond of what is called "a good time"; but +he was never seen really under the influence of liquor. Shy in general +company at first, he became rather a favorite afterwards in a certain +way; he was fond of sports, and was very kind to women and children; he +was also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the piano when he +was in the mood; he was one of those gifted people who can play, after +their own fashion, on any instrument. When he felt pleasantly inclined, +no one was more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He had +become engaged to a girl in good standing, after a summer flirtation. +The girl had come there on a visit, and the engagement lasted only until +her return and the revelation of his prospects to parental inspection. + +For Lawson never had any prospects--or, at least, they never solidly +materialized. He never kept his positions for more than a few months at +a time. There was always a different reason for this, more or less +unimportant on each occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers +whom he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated by +his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic in finding new +openings for him, ready to champion hotly his merits against that most +galling of all criticism, which consists in the simple statement of +adverse facts. + +"You will never be able to make anything out of him," was a sentence +which his relays of friends were sure to hand on to one another. + +One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep the golf-grounds in +order--a position, however, which he filled in such a well-bred manner, +and with so many niceties of consideration for everyone's comfort, that +to have him around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, and +the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket once more and +started going in to town mornings as one of them. + +Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the village, and part of +the time he stayed with the Leverichs; rumor said that Leverich +alternately turned him out or welcomed him, as he lost or renewed +patience, but the relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always +appeared to be friendly. + +Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing to forget the +youthful faults of the handsome, clever boy, and let him in on probation +to the outer edges of it, it was a singular fact that after all these +years of apparent respectability he had made no further progress. + +There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences with a +certain inner purity untouched; with an added reverence for goodness, +and a strength of character all the greater for the sheer effort of +retrieval; whose eyes are forever ashamed when they look back on the +sins that were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the +painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there had been, +perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison lodged, to a +deterioration, however delicate, of the whole tissue. It is strange--or, +rather, it is not strange--that, in spite of respectability of life, +with nothing whatever that was tangible to contravene it, this should +have been thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what felt +of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one he does, and the +combined judgment of the members of an intelligent suburban community is +very keen as to character, no matter how it differs in regard to +actions. The standard of morality in such a section is high--it may +indulge occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a lower scale, +but in social relations the lesser order must go. "Shadiness" is +damning. Lawson was not exactly "shady," but he might be. No girl was +ever supposed to fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too +intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. Strangers whom +he impressed favorably always asked, as Dosia did, "Why, what has he +_done_?" And received the same reply Lois gave her: "Oh, nothing." + +"Isn't he--nice?" + +"Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He can't seem to make a living; +I don't know why--he's clever enough. There's really nothing against him +though, except that he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that +when he goes away on trips he--drinks. But Justin wouldn't like me to +say it; he hates to have people talked about in this way. Still--it's +just as well that you should know all about him." + +"Oh, yes," said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, yet in +reality mystified. She felt at once indignant at the imputations thrown +on Mr. Barr, and yet a little ashamed of having liked him, as something +in bad taste. + +As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped that he wouldn't +come and speak to her at all; but the hope was vain, for, without +apparently seeing her, he made his way through the room, at the +cessation of the dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers. + +It is in one of George MacDonald's stories that Curdie, the hero, tests +everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which unconsciously reveals the true +nature to his magic sense; claws and paws and hoofs and the serpent's +writhe are plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia +involuntarily tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand that had +held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction was strong within her +that some day she would meet and recognize her helper by that remembered +touch, if in no other way. Mr. Barr's hand was smooth, with long +fingers, and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away quickly, +with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met his coolly +appraising eyes, that she had done something school-girlish and +ill-bred. + +"You did not come to see me, after all," she said, when the first +greeting was over, and could have bitten out her tongue for saying it. + +"I regretted very much not being able to," he replied, in a tone of +conventional politeness. "I went West the next day, and have only just +returned. You have been enjoying yourself, I hope?" + +"Oh, immensely," said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; "I couldn't have +had a better time, possibly." Her eyes roved toward the people in front +of them with studied inattention, although she was strangely conscious +in every tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side. + +"You have been to town, I suppose?" he pursued. + +"Yes, indeed, several times." + +"Would you care to come out in the corridor and walk?" he asked +abruptly, as the music struck up again. "I'm not in evening dress, you +see; I only returned from my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer +to dance?" he added. + +"Oh, I prefer to dance!" said Dosia, with the first natural inflection +her voice had possessed in speaking to him. + +"Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow coming over for you. +Good night." + +"You are not going to leave _now_?" exclaimed Dosia, with disappointment +too quick to be concealed. + +"In a few moments; I may not see you again." He did not offer his hand +this time, but bowed and was gone. + +It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, +and Dosia's feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she +did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they +circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled +of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were +being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under +the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of +silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the +smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while +his mother lamented her husband's prolonged absence to everyone who +passed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, +going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the +floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the +dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck +twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose: + +"One more waltz--just one more! This is the best part of the evening. +Lawson--Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, don't say you're too +tired--play!" + +Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosia's waist, +looking questioningly down at her. + +"I think I'd better go," she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet +with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was +plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancing--yet she was +young, too. But at that moment the music struck up again--there was a +crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found +herself gliding into motion ere she was aware. She knew before she +looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the +keys, seemed remote and sad. + +The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened +for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the +bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood +massed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the +polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as +Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it +that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers +flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. +Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which +she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that +she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept +them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden +of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the +stars she swung in that long, entrancing strain--from the flowers to the +stars! From the stars--ah, whither went that flight of ecstasy--this +endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again now--back +to the stars; beyond, beyond--oh, whither? + +A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. It brought Dosia +to the earth, awake and trembling, with parted lips and panting breath. +But her eyes had the wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the +flowers, as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching +the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had slipped unnoticed +from her hand, she walked across the floor with Billy. Her loveliness, +as she smiled, brought a pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so +plainly of the evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the +future possession of some dearest lover, who could never know his loss. + +"I hope I haven't let you stay too long, Dosia," she said practically, +and Justin hurried her into her wraps, after she had given Billy the +rose he asked for. Everybody was leaving at once in couples, laughing +and chattering, with the lights turned out behind them as they went. + +The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with Justin and Lois +was a side view of Lawson Barr going down the stone steps, carrying in +his arms the child who had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The +light head rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs +hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, voluble in thanks, +with the child's cap in her hand. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence +known locally as "going to Stevens'"; in other words, he was a daily +attendant at the institute of that name, situate on the heights of +Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of +that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to +over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each +morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient +trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied +fitfully as he journeyed. + +Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters +admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a +small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother +often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and +that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same +effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of +his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so +blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his +round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her William's +ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way +that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, +Billy was a young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short +clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of +circumstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his +mother's exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with +naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had +accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the +injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had +had the first convincing "shy"; she had complained untiringly to parents +by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to +the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadn't been +the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an +outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an +understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mother's +attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain +loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward +authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far +below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the +meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow. + +The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently +experiencing the tender passion since the age of seven, she regarded +only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have +liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude +boys. + +With added years Billy's outward demeanor had changed in his daily +journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with +school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare; +he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat, +or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But +the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that +its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers one +day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he +would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him, +or whether he was "up against it again" at Stevens, his replies were +unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The +change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was +caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him. + +The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a +peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in +the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one +turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek +and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose +and a dark mustache--the nose and the mustache turned sideways much +oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a +pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and +fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and +Billy swore under his breath. + +When the train had rolled into the station, he went with the other +passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house to see--yes, they were +going over the same ferry together, he still bending toward her as they +walked, she with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one +unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, "The gall of him!" and +walked away to the humiliating trolley which showed that he was still +"going to Stevens'." If he had been out of bondage, he would have been +quick to follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and +show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate duet. + +It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain days his +accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected that he no longer +whistled cheerily all the time he was dressing, but only when he heard +her foot upon the stairs; and although he still chaffed his admiring +sisters at dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the +jesting that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. He +found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. His mother +brought him pills which he refused to take, towering above her--she was +a little woman--tense and aloof. When she taxed him with having +something on his mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her +go no further. + +"It is nothing to do with myself," he conceded, with the spirit of a man +looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The woman in her bowed to it as +she went down-stairs, with pride in him rampant in her heart, to deliver +her report to the two sisters waiting below. + +The Snow family had been settled in the town from its beginning as a +suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow having died--after losing money +largely on his real-estate investments there--twelve years later, when +Billy was an infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large +taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in the place, rich +and poor, and were consequently regarded somewhat in the light of a +directory; the woman by the day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man +or boy could always be achieved by applying to them, for they had an +invariable acquaintance with respectable persons temporarily forced into +filling these positions. They themselves, while adding to their own +finances in various ways, neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their +affairs could interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small +old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall nearly level +with the street; and the little low-ceiled parlor and sitting-room, with +their narrow doorways and slightly uneven floors, were crowded with +large mahogany and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and +Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, from the +cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the ornamental hanging +calendar of the past season. In the autumn the ladies potted plants with +such accumulative energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of +damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and spikes and flat +blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly where to sit without +encroaching perilously on these; Billy's friends always dropped first +into a certain chair and rocked into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on +the marble-topped table behind. + +The Snows had the recognized position in society of being Asked to +Everything. When they went to entertainments, it was in the dark, quiet +garments of every-day life, or the one often remodeled state robe +belonging to each, irrespective of what other people wore. Their +circumstances and their birth were too well known to need pretense. + +Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was twenty-seven, tall +like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be +the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict +unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer +young--as a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely +distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. +Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow +up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long +custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for +sixteen. She was her brother's favorite, secretly aiding and abetting +him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him +now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in +view of his height and large experience. + +The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman, +dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations +and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden +beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat +by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming +plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went +up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and +the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary +fence--incidents of note in themselves without further connection. She +seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one +were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could +answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had +worked hard for her mother in her early youth--that little mother who +now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room from her +interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone +of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: "William won't +tell me what's the matter, but I know it's something to do with that +girl at the Alexanders'. Willie is growing up so fast!" + +"Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden," said Miss Bertha, in comfortable +corroboration. "That's been going on for some weeks." + +"Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps she's snubbed +him in some way." + +"No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating +Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, it's just +being in love that upsets him." + +"Yes, I really think that's all." + +Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with +slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth. +The daylight was beginning to go. + +"He's got a rose she gave him,--never mind how I know,--and he keeps it +wrapped up in tissue"--she pronounced it "tisher"--"paper in his +waistcoat pocket. He leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his +clothes. And Ada says--you know that picture in the magazine that we all +said looked so like Miss Linden? He's got it in a little frame. Ada says +that it tumbles out from underneath his pillow once in a while when +she's taking the covers off; I suppose the child puts it there at night +and forgets it in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again +when she makes up the bed, as if she'd overlooked it. He never says +anything, and of course she doesn't, either." + +"I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously," said the +mother, alarmed. She had known all this before, but it was a fashion of +the family to talk over and over what they already knew. "I _hope_ she +will not take him seriously." + +"Mother! They're both so young." Ada, who had been leaning forward with +her face in her hands and her chin upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke +for the first time. + +"Oh, that's very well!" Mrs. Snow tossed her head as one with +experience. "He is, of course, nothing but a mere boy at nineteen, but a +girl of twenty is years older. When a girl is twenty, she goes in +society with women of _any_ age. I was married myself at eighteen--not +that I should wish either of my daughters to do so." + +"Well, you can feel safe about that, mother," interpolated Ada. + +"William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not blame any girl +for being somewhat captivated by him; I should be sorry if Miss Linden +allowed her affections to be engaged. She may not know that his career +is mapped out before him. William will not be in a position to marry +before he is thirty-six. William is----" + +"The people are coming from the train," interposed Miss Bertha, waving +back one thin hand to stop her mother's discourse--which she could have +repeated backward--and scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across the +street. + +"Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, come here. Mrs. +Leverich has on her new furs--the ones her husband gave her. Don't they +make her look stout? There are the Brentons, I think that's a bag of +coffee he's carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square +ends--perhaps _she's_ been buying corsets; if not, it must be a bottle +of whisky. And there--who is that? Oh, I thought it was Mr. Alexander in +a new coat; of course it's too early for him--they say he's been making +money hand over hand lately. And here comes--why it's George Sutton! +Ada, Ada, bow! he's looking. He sees us waving--ah!" + +There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared on the cheeks +of both sisters. + +The mother murmured apprehensively, "They say _he_ is devoted to Miss +Linden," but neither answered. Ada had benefited, like the other girls, +by his attentions, she had been given candy and flowers and made one in +his theater-parties, but it was the secret conviction of all three women +that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his real +devotion to Ada. The others were just a circle--she was the particular +one; and Heaven only knows how many girls in this circle shared the same +conviction. His smile and nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that +blotted out all his preference for Miss Linden. + +"You had better pull down the shade now," said Mrs. Snow, after a few +minutes. "It's time to light the lamp." + +"No, wait a moment--there's another train in." Miss Bertha's eyes +pierced the gloom. "The Carpenter boys, those new people in the Farley +house, and that's all. No, there's somebody 'way behind--I declare, it's +Miss Linden! She's ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at +first. I wonder she didn't come on the train ahead. Who can that be with +her? Why--" there was a pause. "I suppose he must have just happened to +get off with her at the station," said Miss Bertha in an altered voice. + +"Oh, yes; I'm sure that's it," said Ada. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +"What is all this that I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr?" asked Justin +abruptly, one evening when he and his wife were at home alone together, +a rather unusual occurrence now. Either he was out, or there was +company, or Dosia was sitting with them by the table on which stood the +reading-lamp. Just now she was staying overnight with Miss Torrington, +at the other end of the town, "across the track," practicing for a +concert. + +Justin had dropped his collar-button that morning in the process of +dressing, and the small incident was productive of unforeseen results. +The hunt for it had delayed him to a later train and a seat by Billy +Snow. + +"What is this I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? They say she has been +going in with him on the express nearly every morning this month. She +may have been coming out with him, too, for all I know." + +"Who says so?" asked Lois, startled, but contemptuous. + +"Billy, for one." + +"I do not see what business it is of his." + +"That hasn't anything to do with it, Lois. As a matter of fact, the boy +wouldn't have told me at all if I hadn't happened to sit with him +to-day; he's heard plenty of remarks on it, though, and he's cut up +about it. They sat in front of us, some seats down, entirely oblivious +of everybody; it might have been their private car. It gave me a start, +I can tell you, when Billy said it was not the first time. Has she said +anything to you about it?" + +"Yes, I think she has mentioned once or twice that she had seen him on +the train; I know he brought her home one afternoon when she was late. +But I haven't paid any particular attention; and, after all, there's no +harm in it." + +"Oh, no; there's no _harm_, if you put it that way--only she mustn't do +it. You know what I mean, Lois. Dosia ought not to want to be with him." + +"I suppose he comes and talks to her, and she doesn't know how to stop +him." + +"Perhaps." + +"And you sent her out in his care that first night," said Lois. She felt +unbelieving and combative; Lawson was so unattractive to her that she +could not conceive of his being otherwise to any girl. + +"Of course; and I would do so again under the same circumstances--that +was an emergency. But that's very different from making a practice of +it. You must tell Dosia, as long as she can't see it herself. Let her +get her lesson changed to another hour and that will settle the thing. +Does she see much of Barr at other places?" + +"No more than anybody else does; of course, he is more or less around. +But she knows _just_ what he is like, Justin; I told her all about him +the first thing, and she hears it from everybody. I am sure you are +mistaken about her liking his society, she told me once that it always +made her uncomfortable when he was near her. I really don't think you +need be afraid of anything serious." + +"All right, then. Probably a hint will be sufficient; but don't forget +to give it, Lois. She is very much of a child in some things." + +"Yes, she is," said Lois, resignedly. + +This having Dosia with them had turned into one of those burdens which +people sometimes ignorantly assume under a rose-colored impulse. It had +seemed that it must be necessarily a charming thing to have a young girl +in the house. But to have a young girl who was always practicing on the +piano, to the derangement of Reginald's sleep or to the inconvenience of +visitors in the little drawing-room, one who had to be specially +considered in every plan, and whose presence took away all privacy from +Lois' daily companionship with Justin, was a doubtful pleasure. Even +this rainy evening with Justin and herself cozily placed together was, +after all, not hers, but invaded, if not with the presence, at least +with the disturbing thought of Dosia. + +There were all the little grievances which sound so infinitesimal, and +yet count up to so much when sympathy is lacking. Dosia had lived in a +Southern atmosphere and in a home which had no regular rule. She +invariably wanted to play with the children at the wrong time, and yet +perhaps did not always offer to take care of them when it would have +been a help. If Lois was busy when Justin came home at night, she would +invariably find afterwards that Dosia had swiftly poured into his +ears--in nervous loquacity at being alone with him--all the domestic +happenings of the day, so that every remark that Lois made was answered +by a "Yes; Dosia has already told me." These slight threads, which Lois +had treasured up from which to spin a little web of interest for her +beloved, would thus be broken off short. Dosia also had a fashion of +ensconcing herself unthinkingly in Justin's particular seat by the lamp, +in which case he sat patiently and uncomfortably in an attitude out of +the radius, or else went up-stairs to the untidy sitting-room to read by +himself, leaving Lois, with her teeth on edge, to keep company perforce +with Dosia, to whom he would not allow Lois to make protest, avowing +that he was not inconvenienced at all. He had an unvarying kindness and +sense of justice regarding the girl. But the family was like the bicycle +of concert-hall fame, built for two, and this third person jarred its +running qualities out of gear. + +It was the night after Justin's charge to her that Lois nerved herself +to broach the subject of Lawson to Dosia, who was copying some music by +the table. Both her hair and her dress were arranged with a little new +touch of elegance, but there was a droop to the corners of her mouth +that had not been there before--a suggestion of hardness or melancholy +or defiance, it would have been difficult to say which. + +Justin was getting ready to go out, and Lois could hear his footsteps as +he walked up and down above. She hated to begin, and her very reluctance +gave a chill tone to her voice as she said temporizingly, "Dosia, please +don't keep Reginald out so late again as you did this afternoon. It is +too cold." + +"We only went to the post-office; he said he was warm." + +Dosia, who had generously curtailed her practicing to take the mother's +place, felt ill-used. + +"I know; but it was too late for him. His feet were as cold as ice. I am +_so_ afraid of croup." + +"I'm sorry," said Dosia, in a low voice. "I won't do it again." + +"Well, never mind that now." Lois hesitated, and then took the plunge: +"I want to speak to you about Lawson Barr, Dosia." + +Dosia's color, which came and went so prettily when she spoke, always +left her when she was really moved, or at the times when girls +ordinarily blush. She turned pale now and her eyes became defiant, but +she did not answer. + +The other stumbled along, sorry and ashamed, as if she were the culprit: + +"People have been commenting--I hear that he has been with you a great +deal lately." + +"Where?" The girl's voice was hard. + +"On the train." + +"He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice the week +before--yes, and yesterday. And he came out with me once." She counted +out the times as if they were a contravention. "I don't see how I am +going to help it if people speak to me, I can't _tell_ them to go away. +_I_ don't want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one day; +was that commented on, too?" + +There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth by outraged +modesty--and there is no modesty that feels itself more outraged than +that of the girl who knows she has given some slight cause for reproof. + +"Dosia, be reasonable," said Lois, annoyed that her talk was being made +so hard for her. "I know it's horrid to be 'spoken to,' but Justin is +very particular, and he feels that we are responsible for you. And, +besides, you wouldn't want it thought that you liked Lawson's society. I +am to go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the hour for +your lesson changed." She paused for some answer, but none came, and she +went on: "I told Justin that he need not worry, there was no danger of +your caring too much for _Lawson_! That's nonsense. Why, you know all +_about_ him, and just what he amounts to. But, of course, if you are +seen with him----" + +"You need not say any more. I never want to speak to him again!" said +Dosia, strangling. She swept her things from the table and rushed up to +her own room in a whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the +imputation in Lois' tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was +pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what another +despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate of him as she +had hitherto been to the public one. + +She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something that she had +been unconsciously dreading had come upon her--the notice of her little +world. Before it had been voiced to her by Lois she had persistently +considered herself unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion +for her being "spoken to," yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment that +she had not been quite true to her highest instincts. + +The exquisitely sensitive perception which is an inherent part of +innocence was hers. The Dosia who at twelve could not be induced to +enter a room when a certain man was in it, because she "did not like the +way he _looked_ at her," had as unerring an instinct now as then; it was +an instinct so deep, so interwoven with every pulse of her nature, that +to deny it ever so little was a spiritual hurt. She could not have told +why certain subjects, certain joking expressions even, revolted her so +that she shrank from them involuntarily. She could not have told why she +knew there was something about Lawson different from the other men she +had been accustomed to. Dosia not only knew nothing of the practice of +evil, she knew nothing of life nor the laws of it; but it could never be +said of her that she did not know when right bordered on wrong. She +knew--and it would have been impossible for her not to have known--her +slightest deviation from that shining road which can only be followed by +white feet. Her first quick idea of Lawson as not the kind of man that +she would ever want to marry still held good. Back of all this was the +image of the true prince. + +There are people whose natures we always feel electrically, a sensation +which depends neither on liking nor on disliking, and which often +partakes of both. When we meet them there is always a slight shock, a +psychic tingling, a displacement of values, that makes us uncertain of +our pathway; the colors seen in this artificial light are different from +those seen by day. Barr affected Dosia thus. If he came into a room, she +knew it at once; dancing or walking or talking with others, she felt his +eyes upon her, disquieting her and making her conscious of his presence, +so that she could not get up or sit down naturally. When he was not +there, everything was flat and uninteresting in the withdrawal of this +exciting disquietude. If she met his remarks cleverly, it gave her a +delighted occupation for hours in recalling them; if she failed in +repartee, and was "thick" and school-girlish, her cheeks would burn and +the taste for life would leave her; she could hardly wait to see him +again to retrieve herself. She was not in love with Barr, she was not +even in love with love,--a fairly healthful process,--but she was in +love with the excitement of his presence. + +She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to seek her. After the +night of the bazaar and that wondrous waltz, she had felt that he must +fly to speak to her at the nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had +played for her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure +him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She invented many +excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp disappointment of which he was +necessarily unconscious. As she met him casually at different +places,--with the old quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar +manner,--his lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over which +she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she lived in was +entirely of her own creation. In these last two months she had always an +undercurrent of thought for him, whether she was practicing or sewing, +or chaffing with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy +attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawson's avoidance of her had come a +childish, uncalculating' impulse to attract. Dosia had not told the +truth when she said that she could not help his speaking to her; she +knew very well the morning he would have passed her by in the train, as +usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,--he knew the +place allotted to him,--but he accepted permission. When he sat down by +her, she swiftly wished him away again; yet her heart beat under his +cool glance--a glance which seemed to read her every thought. These +interviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, yet in +which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious and stinging +pleasure, like eating ice. + +There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about Christmas-time +and after--a delightful flare that burned up red and glowing, only to +sink back gradually into the darkness of monotony. There was that fall +into a hum-drum condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which +shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept later down-town, +and the women had the usual influx of winter colds and minor maladies +which interfere with planned festivities. The younger sort had +engagements, individually and collectively, for "things in town," either +coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight with +friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove Tuesday had fallen +through. + +The fairy glamour was already gone for Dosia. The personal note which +she had missed at first was everything, and she found it nowhere but in +Lawson. If she could have poured out her thoughts and feelings to +Lois,--"talked things over," girl-fashion,--if Lois had been her friend +and lover--But Lois had no room for her; Dosia had learned to feel all +the bitterness of the alien. And she was shy with the pleasant but +self-sufficient women whom she met socially, and who were so intimate +with one another; Dosia merely sat on the edge of conversations, so to +speak, and smiled. She could not learn this assured fluency. The very +children were hedged in from her by restrictions. To give up those +little incidental meetings with Lawson was to give up the one silver +string on which hung happiness, and yet--and yet--Dosia felt the sting +of Lois' matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him indescribably. +All women look down upon a man who will allow himself to be despised. +She had cherished an ideal of him as a man lonely, misunderstood, +terribly handicapped by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable +of good and noble things. She had thought---- + +"Dosia?" + +"Well?" + +"Will you shut your door? The light streams down here and keeps Reginald +from going to sleep. He waked when you went up-stairs." + +Dosia rose and closed the door noiselessly; she would have liked to shut +it with a bang. It was a climax. There seemed to be nothing that she +could do in this house that was right! Her attitude had ceased to be +only that of an alien, it was that of an antagonist; but it was also +that of a lonely and unguarded child. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. Dosia could hear +Justin's voice upraised toward his only son, and Lois' pleading +"_Please_, Justin!" + +"Be quiet, Lois; I'll settle this. Go down-stairs." + +"I want dinky orter." The child's voice was high. + +"You have just had a drink of water; lie still." + +"Redge 'ants 'noder dinky orter." + +"Do you hear me? Lie still." + +"Let me take him, Justin; I'm sure he isn't well. I----" + +Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, and could +imagine the look from Justin that had commanded her obedience. There was +a definite masculine authority about him before which, on those rare +occasions when he chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed +down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric ages. Only the +son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness caught from the same +blood. + +It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother down-stairs, +vibrating with sympathy for her child, could not understand Justin's +attitude, or why he was so much more severe with the boy than he had +ever been with Zaidee. + +Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess, +toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry. +But the boy was different. Civilized man still usually lives in the +outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance +of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature +in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he +knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it. +His "Lie still, you rascal, or I'll make you," voiced in its sternness +an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee. + +Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down +once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife +to kiss her good-by. + +"Are you going out again?" Her voice had a dull patience in it and her +eyes refused to meet his. + +"Yes; did you want me for anything special?" + +He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue +eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by +his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at +Lois' insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of +the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. +Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. +Justin's discarded one had passed through every stage of decent +finesse--the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined +sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife +in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship +still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude +to make a new and opulent person of him. + +"No, of course I don't want you for anything special"--she spoke in a +monotone. "I only thought you were going to stay home." + +"I've got to go to Leverich's, and I want to speak to Selden about the +house first. I promised him I'd stop there." + +They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the +hill, and Selden was the architect. + +"You have been out every night this week"--there was a suspicion of +tears in her voice. "I do so hate to be left alone." + +"You have Dosia." + +"Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I can't make out +that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she +looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home +this evening--won't you, dear?" + +"I can't--I wish I could." He said the words mechanically, for he was +burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. "I must be at +Selden's by half-past eight.' + +"It is only a quarter-past now--you can walk there in five minutes. Do +sit down for a moment. I don't get any chance to talk to you at all, and +you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any +more--except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night." + +Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and +held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all +the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrast--her +rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves +of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful, +but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily +repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his +hat against it. She lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to +him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a +loss---- + +Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his +children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness +of their possession lately,--the sweetness that consists in watching the +unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,--but when he +had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a +hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious +moments waste. He could hear Zaidee's gentle little voice repeating her +mother's perfunctory extenuation: "Poor daddy's nervous; come away, +Redge!" + +"I hope you'll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the +stairs," said Lois suddenly. + +"He'll put one there if he can." + +"If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I don't want +the house if he can't put the closet in. I----" + +"All right. I've got to go now." If he had cared to think about it, he +might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as +these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from +her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far +into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried +him from her. + +The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of +prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures--of which the house +on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it +were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with the +principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard +not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody +knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality, +there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions +has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a +sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently +assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the main one. + +The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the +factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from +that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute +are from the twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole +orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing +that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of +enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping +enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money +came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as +the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a +hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but +"hands" must be paid off on Saturday night; there had been one Saturday +when there had been what Leverich called "tall hustling" by him and +Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had +thought of his backers as men of millions--with that easy, assured +confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions +were in the concrete, solid and golden--a bottomless store in reserve. +He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant +quality, running like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, +there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both +Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little +butter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover +an emergency was a daily expedient--the ability to do so ranked as a +part of one's assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large +sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the "business" +seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To +his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade passed and +repassed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated +attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after +the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind +of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and +the children's. + +Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in +order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of +social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through +everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but +a woman. His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her +thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less +of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick +feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was +merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if +her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him +tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling +that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because +she must wait until night to set herself right with him again. At those +times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her children--her +only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town +and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded +streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But +when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed +the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother's +absence. + +She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening +retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first +surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown +to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal +annoyance,--like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,--that measurably lessened the +joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man +must have patience with his wife's complainings, and try always to +remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it, +which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never +complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him. + +Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into +the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the +door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was +inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired +in an old "dress suit," the conventional lines of which, with the stiff +expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature +still more pronounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little +drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back +as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm +stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet +he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift +pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from +the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to +him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring +earnestness. + +"Well, you are all right," he said, after the first greetings; "Miss +Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South I'd say +just what I thought of you, but I'm afraid to up here; folks are too +careful about complimentin' for me. When I see a young lady like +you,--or like Mrs. Alexander, here,--" he rose and bowed gallantly, "I +want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. There's +nothing so beautiful on God's earth to me as a beautiful woman--unless +it's a mother. A mother doesn't need to have a complexion if she's got +the mother spirit shinin' out of her. I had a mother once--a better +never lived. She's dead." + +"That is very sad," said Lois, in the pause that followed this +announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and +Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful +communing. + +"Yes, ma'am," said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs +back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it. + +"How is your wife?" asked Dosia. "Have you seen her lately?" + +"I was home for a week around Christmas-time," answered Mr. Cater. "It's +sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short period--at least, I +find it so. I don't know _as_ it pays, except as something to look +forward to before you've done it; there's a good deal in that. My wife +lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it +seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home." + +"I should think she would want to stay here with you," said Dosia. + +Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. "Well, the fact is," he +conceded, "my wife's powerful fond of her family. There's nothing +against a woman being fond of her family." + +"Oh, no," said Lois. + +"No, ma'am. My wife's a mighty fine woman. If I'd had the luck to belong +to her family--but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to +me crops up, I expect, when I ain't countin' on it. She did bring the +children and try livin' up here in a flat the first year I went into the +business, but it made her so pinin' she had to go back; she wasn't used +to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_ +know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin' sort of old and agin', +and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin' her, I +reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin' a +gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he'd promised +her to quit. Her sister's husband, Jim Pierce, he'd lit out before. Now, +there's the other brother, Satterson--he's a mighty fine fellow, six +foot two in his stockin's, but he doesn't _do_ anything. Just drinks. My +wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don't blame any woman +for being devoted to her family--shows heart." + +"Why, yes, I suppose so," said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an +inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory +relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater's earnings; she knew his wife as a +pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth. + +"After all, there isn't much in a man, when you get down to it, to +interest a woman," continued Mr. Cater impartially. "She wants him to +think of _her_; of co'se it's his business to. I had a sort of set idea +to begin on--but there's nothin' in life so wreckin' as a set idea; I've +found that out. You've got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and +turn it so's you can see to keep on your windin' way without runnin' +down your fellow-bein's--isn't that so? I don't blame any woman for +findin' out that a man doesn't always make up for home and mother--I +don't know that I always yearn for my own society." His inscrutable +expression changed to a smile. "I reckon you won't yearn for it, either, +if I go on talkin' in this way." + +"Oh, yes, I will," said Dosia, dimpling. "Did you see my father and +mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?" + +"Why--about the same as usual," replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a +swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly +materialized itself to Dosia. "I promised them I'd come and see you--and +meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia's comin' here that I got +acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander," he continued, turning to +Lois. "He's a mighty fine man. He and I, we're choppin' at the same log, +so to speak, only he's takin' side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon +he's got a pretty good backin'?" + +"Oh, yes," affirmed Lois. + +"Yes, ma'am. Of course, he doesn't talk about it. I haven't seen Mr. +Alexander much for a couple of weeks; he's been busy and I've been +busy--we lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his +friends--Mr. Leverich for one--slightly in the way of business. Mr. +Martin--Mr. Martin's a man _nobody_ knows more'n slightly. You would not +think he was such a smart business man, would you? He's so sort of small +and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. But _I_ don't +care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake +in all they touch. Now you think I'm hard on him, don't you?" He +hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois: +"Martin sort of reminds me of somethin' that happened with my two boys +when I was home at Christmas. They're little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, +right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you." + +"They are dear little fellows," said Dosia warmly. + +"They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind 'em, and Angy--that's +the eldest, he's six--was stoppin' the way; so I says to him, 'What's +stoppin' you, son?' and he answers: 'Oh, I'm carryin' up Jim's cake and +my cake, and I'm eatin' _Jim's cake now_.' That's like Martin for all +the world--always carryin' somebody's cake for 'em, and swallowin' it on +the way. Well, doesn't it seem good to be lookin' at you again, Miss +Dosia! But I'm sorry Alexander isn't in, too." + +"Oh, I hope he'll come before you leave," returned Lois. It seemed a +foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the +nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure, +half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There +was a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive +recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over +which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect +on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, +when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent. + +Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while +Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of +Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word "home" +carried such suggested association that Dosia half forgot that it had +never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy. + +When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and +Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the +others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more. + +"Well, this is comfort," he said, with a sort of wistful gratitude. +"I've been thinkin' 'twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train, +but I'm sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young +ladies takin' all this trouble for me--well, I just can't tell you how I +appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside." + +"You must get pretty lonely sometimes," said Lois kindly, with a sudden +sympathy for something in his tone. + +He nodded slowly. "Well, yes, I do; but I've quit thinkin' of it, as a +rule. I reckon I've got about as much as I deserve in this world, when +you come to sizin' things up. If you get to pityin' yourself, you slump; +you slump all _to_ pieces--ain't no mortal good to yourself nor anybody +else. I've found _that_ out." + +"You seem to find out a good many things," said Lois, with a twinge of +assent. + +"Well, yes, I do." His face relaxed in a pleased smile. "Keep addin' to +my collection daily; but it isn't cheap, no more than other +collectin'--costs money. Girard says--by the way, I never asked you if +you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the +train. I didn't know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this +rabbit's more'n good. I haven't had one like it since I was with Girard +last year." + +"No, I do not know anyone by that name," said Lois a little wearily. + +"Then you'd ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she'd ought to. He's a _man_. +Young, too, just the kind she'd like. He's related to the Wilmots, Judge +Wilmot's family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. +His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their +money. Kind of wearin' to hear that, ain't it? I get tired of it myself. +I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money--or are +a-losin' it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that's +risin' into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible +to walk on somethin' that isn't a down grade." + +"How about Mr. Girard?" asked Dosia. + +"Oh, well, he's all right. He's on an up grade, if anybody ever +was--now. But I wouldn't want a boy of mine to go through what he has, +though it's made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after +they'd moved 'way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard +time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don't +know that she wrote to the rest of 'em. I don't know but what her mind +got sort of wanderin' when she fell sick. She died at a little town in +Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn't anyone to look after the +child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, +and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat +him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor +little chap, brought up tender by a lovin' mother, used to crawl into +the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry +his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once--Girard, he hardly ever +talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a +snow-storm--he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas +story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into +the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_." + +"How did he get away?" asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the +boy's little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although +the hurt had been over so long ago. + +"Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn't tell me the whole +of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he +went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own +people, too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba--I guess some of the +wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on +some government business; he's a personal friend of the President. He's +young, too, not more'n twenty-eight. He's bound to get ahead at whatever +he sets himself to. But he's got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly +kill a big Swede once that was wallopin' a sick horse. What you laughin' +at, Miss Dosia? I reckon we're all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn't +_that_ time, is it?" He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at +the clock that was striking. + +"I'm afraid it is," affirmed Lois. + +"Then I've got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. 'Tisn't +manners to eat and run, I know, but--" He had risen and was swiftly +putting on his coat in the hall. "Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can +get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin'. +Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your +hospitality; I do _so_. I--" He was loping down the path already, his +long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight. +Dosia called after him mischievously, "You'd better wait until the +twelve-three," before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air +was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the +lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Cater's presence had been. + +She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains +of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois +wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having +taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time +than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the +interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have +relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a +sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any +reminiscence whatever. + +He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and surprised to find +traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late. + +"Mr. Cater has been here," announced Lois, in explanation. + +"Cater! I'm sorry to have missed him." + +"He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not go until eleven, and +I was sure you would be in before that." + +"Well, I meant to be." + +"Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,"--something prompted her +against her will to say what had been rankling in her memory,--"he +thinks Mr. Martin is like a crab, and that he takes people in between +his claws and pinches them. I wish you'd be careful." + +Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. "He will not pinch me, at +all events," he said shortly. After a moment's pause he made an effort +to return to his former manner, but with an altered tone: + +"I'm sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting with Selden +about the house; you can have the closet. After that we were all talking +at Leverich's. He had a friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow, +extraordinarily interesting; he was giving us points on the South +American trade. He's going to be of great use to us, he goes down there +again in the spring. He's a fine-looking fellow, by the way, tall and +well set up; he reminds me of Brent, Lois--you remember him? The same +kind of bright, resolute face; only this man's browner." + +Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, Justin turned to +Dosia, who had slipped back into the room to look under the table and +chairs for a blue bow that had fallen from her hair. She stood now in +the doorway with it in her hand. + +"He came up from the South the same day you did last fall, Dosia, he was +in that wreck. It must have been a horrible thing." Justin broke off at +the retrospection of the narrative. + +"Yes," said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the door for support. + +"You were fortunate to get off so well." Absorbed in his own recital, +Justin did not observe her. "He was going from one car to another when +the train went off the trestle--I don't wonder you would never talk +about it, Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There was a +poor young girl who was alone, like you--he didn't know what became of +her; he was ill himself in the hospital for two weeks afterwards. His +description of the whole thing was extraordinarily vivid." Justin was +now bolting windows and putting out lights as he talked. "You two girls +must go to bed at once; it's nearly twelve." + +"What was his name?" asked Dosia. + +"His name? Why, I thought I'd told you. His name's Girard--Bailey +Girard." + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +"Reginald has the measles." + +Lois made the announcement breathlessly, as she stood outside of the +drawing-room, addressing the visitors who sat on the sofa, talking to +Dosia. + +"The doctor has just gone, and he says it is the measles. I don't +suppose I had better come in the room." There was a tone of resentment +in her voice which seemed to originate in the idea of being excluded; in +reality, it was caused by the bitter thought that she had known for a +couple of days that Redge was not well, and that his father had been +exacting with him. "I really suppose I had better not come in." + +"Oh, don't mind me!" Mrs. Leverich, gorgeous in velvet and furs, spoke +reassuringly. "There are no children at our house, and I've had the +measles." + +"Of course, it's not scarlet fever," continued Lois, dropping into a +chair, "or diphtheria. I suppose Zaidee will get it, and we have to be +quarantined. I don't know what to do about you, Dosia." She was feeling +the fell blow of a contagious disease, which upsets every previously +stable condition. + +"I've had the measles," said the girl, but she added with quick anxiety: +"There are my lessons; do you suppose it will make any difference about +them? I don't see how I can lose them now, and there's that concert +Saturday." + +"If we're quarantined, you're quarantined," said Lois tersely. "If there +was _any_ place where you could go and stay----" + +"Mrs. Alexander, let her come to me," said Mrs. Leverich warmly. "I'd +love to have her; I _really_ would. She can keep up with her lessons and +engagements just the same then. You know, I'm always so happy when I can +have a young girl in the house; and as for Mr. Leverich, nothing pleases +him better. Go and pack your trunk at once, my dear, and we'll take it +on the carriage as we go back." + +Dosia looked hesitatingly at Lois. + +"Why--I do not know," said Lois, surprised, yet considering. + +"But _I_ do." Mrs. Leverich spoke with a cordial authority that, after a +little more conversation, settled the matter. + +Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise little help of +Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from the closet and toilet +articles from the dressing-table, and in her efforts dropped the red +ribbon from her hair into the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, +swift huggings from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this +transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was something on +her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor below, she ran down to speak to +her, half dressed: "Lois, I hate to leave you here alone; I don't mind +being kept from things, really and truly. Let me stay and help you with +dear little Redge." For once her sympathy made her natural. + +"No, you had better go," said Lois. She had but one desire--to be left +at liberty at last with her own. She added, to avoid further pleading: + +"I would rather be alone." + +"Oh!" exclaimed Dosia, shrinking. But conscience had unexpectedly +claimed her, and she went on, hesitantly, with a painful timidity, her +color coming and going: + +"I wanted to ask--do you think I ought to go to Mrs. Leverich's, after +what you said? Won't Mr. Barr be there?" + +In the whole realm of the mother's mind there was no room for anything +at present but her measles-smitten household. She looked at Dosia as if +making an effort to understand. "Why, yes, I suppose he will be there. +Just don't have anything to do with him if you don't want to. You will +not need to; he is out of the house most of the time, anyway." + +"Oh, very well," assented Dosia, chilled and yet relieved. The blood of +youth was already running riot at the delightful prospect of another +change. But she slipped into the nursery to kiss poor little feverish +Redge good-by, and leaned out of the carriage that was driving her away +to wave her hand again and again to Zaidee, whose red cheeks and little +snub-nose were pressed close to the window-pane. + +Mrs. Leverich was a woman who was somewhat below par in birth and +education, devoid of certain finer instincts, and used to an overflow of +luxury in her daily living that amounted sometimes to vulgar display. To +balance this, she was still handsome, if somewhat too stout, and +hospitable to a superlative degree. "Staying company" was a necessity to +her happiness. She had an absolute passion for making other people +comfortable, and surrounded her guests with a kindness and forethought +so enveloping that it almost spoiled them for contact afterwards with a +rude world. She really possessed in this regard an unselfish +good-heartedness, mingled with a sort of vanity that was pleased with +applause at its manipulations; her own comfort was indifferent to her +beside the subtler and warmer pleasure of being the source of good to +others. It is no figure of speech to say that she was willing to do +anything to promote the welfare of her guests; it was no hardship to +give up her own way in their interests, or to do any act, however tiring +and distasteful, that gave pleasure to anyone. She hated cards, yet she +would play long, tedious games with beaming incompetence, to make up a +hand; she disliked the smell of tobacco, but was never satisfied until +every man around her was happily supplied with cigars or pipes. Music +was a jangle to her, and any book above the caliber of the fiction which +displays a low-necked authoress upon the cover a weariness indeed; but +she would labor unceasingly to place both music and literature within +the reach of her guests. She had windows opened when she herself was +chilly, and fires lighted when she was suffering with the heat; she took +long drives in the hot sun when she would have much preferred a nap; she +chaperoned girls uncomplainingly until five o'clock in the morning. The +least wish of a guest, spoken or divined, was gratified if within her +power. It is true that she had a retinue of servants at her command, +but, if necessary, she would have served her guests with her own hands, +and had been known to do so. There was only one drawback to her +hospitality--she welcomed, but did not speed the parting guest. It was +difficult indeed to leave without a pitched battle, and the effort of +temporary disunion was so great as sometimes to result in a permanent +rupture of friendship. Her "I see--you don't want to stay with us any +longer" voiced that injured feeling which blasts whatever it comes in +contact with, and which disclaimers serve only to heighten. Once away +from her, her interest in the former guest ceased almost entirely, no +matter how close the association had been under her roof; outside of it +everyone was lost in a haze which called for a distinct and wearying +effort, seldom undertaken, to penetrate. + +In appearance she was on the Oriental type of her half-brother, Lawson +Barr, but with a softness, both of expression and contour, which he did +not possess. She was ten years older than he. Her motions and the tone +of her voice were languid. Her husband--who enjoyed the benefits of +being the chief and permanent guest in this household--was extremely +fond of her, and proud of her beauty and popularity. Leverich was one of +those coarse-seeming and coarse-acting men who, nevertheless, come of a +race of gentlefolk, and who have innately, and no matter how much they +may choose to overlay the fact, certain traditions. He had been known to +say, in rebuttal of some criticism on his wife's breeding, what was +quite true--that she was good enough for _him_; but he had, underneath, +a little contempt for her because she was. It was one of the traditions +that a man should find a quality in his wife to revere. + +Leverich liked to surround his wife with luxuries, to give her +everything that money could buy and that her gently sensuous temperament +craved. Her attachment was riveted to him by gifts of clothing and +jewelry and bric-a-brac as well as money--such things being to her the +only tangible evidences of affection. Dosia had hitherto seen the house +only as a caller. She was impressed now by the richness of the +furnishings above, as she was led up to her room, a large, many-windowed +apartment on the second floor. It was all a gleam of polished mahogany, +and brass and mirrors and silver toilet articles, blended with rose-silk +draperies; the alcoved bed was spread with a flowered silk counterpane, +the floors covered with rich Eastern rugs; easy-chairs and low tables +spread with books dotted the room; a couch piled high with down cushions +stood at a seductive angle. A maid glided forward to take Dosia's hat +and cloak, while another knelt at the hearth to light the logs upon the +brass andirons, and Mrs. Leverich came in and out in an overflow of +solicitude. + +"I really think you had better rest. You _must_ be tired. No, of +course"--at Dosia's laughing remonstrance--"the drive was nothing, but +the shock--a shock like that tells on you before you know it. Here comes +your trunk; have you the key? Elizabeth, unpack Miss Dosia's trunk, and +get out a dressing-gown for her. I'm going to insist on your lying down +on the lounge for a while. Now, don't do that, Elizabeth will take off +your shoes for you. And, Amelia,"--this to the maid at the +hearth,--"bring up some tea and biscuits. No, you don't care for tea? +Well, a glass of sherry, then, and some hothouse grapes. My dear +Dosia,--you'll let me call you Dosia, won't you?--you may not feel the +need of it now, but it will do you good. I'm not going to stay with you, +I'll just move this little table with the magazines on it near you, and +leave you to rest; but first I want to show you this." She opened the +door of a smaller, hexagonal apartment adjoining. "I'm going to turn it +into a music-room for you." + +"Oh, Mrs. Leverich!" protested Dosia, in amazement. + +"I've been thinking of it all the way home in the carriage. Of course, +you won't want to practice down-stairs, where people are coming in and +out all the time; it would be very annoying to you. This has been used +as an extra dressing-room. I shall have those thick hangings taken down +and the furniture moved out, and put in light chairs and a cottage +piano, and a few palms over by the window. You'll see!" + +"But, Mrs. Leverich----" + +"Now, don't say a _word_; it's all settled. Elizabeth will come to you +when it's time to dress, so you need give yourself no anxiety about +that. Just let me draw this coverlet over you and tuck your feet in. +Now, how sweet you do look, to be sure!" + +Dosia did "look sweet," and as comfortable and soft as a kitten. The +light-blue kimono of outing flannel,--of which she had been half ashamed +when the maid unpacked it,--though cheap, was becoming; her loosened +hair fell over the blended pillows and the rosy coverlet. The wood fire +at which she gazed crackled and sent out the pungent, aromatic smell of +Southern pine, which mingled with the perfume of a bunch of violets on +the table near the golden sherry in its crystal glass, and the plate of +white and reddish grapes. There was the unaccustomed stillness of a +large, well-appointed house, where the walls were deadened to sound, and +the floors had thick-piled rugs upon them, and the servants walked with +soft-shod feet. Such luxurious well-being had never been Dosia's before. +This was like being in a fairy palace, where you had only to clap your +hands to get anything you wished for. And the most charming thing about +the fairy palace was that there you always met the prince. + +This girl was so constituted that, except in the first flush of +excitement incident to her entrance into this new sphere, she must have +always some heart-warm thought, some little inner pleasure of her own, +to make the larger one serve. Dosia knew now that she was to meet the +true prince. This was the house he visited; all this outer circle of +comfort was but the prelude to love--that mysterious and intangible love +that made you happy ever after. She was glad that she had kept hold of +that hand, and had not let herself be drawn away by lesser ties. Her +day-dream was to bewitch and dazzle him, to compel him to her +attraction; a dozen situations, based on that first idea of his +recognition of her in some noble deed, occupied her happy mind; in all +moments of extra exaltation she brought out the thought and played with +it and hugged it to her. She had yet to learn how few things happen as +we imagine them. + +In the midst of her half-drowsy musings, the door behind her burst open; +suddenly a big collie-dog bounded in. He was licking her cheeks, when a +sharp whistle called him back, and the door was instantly closed again. +Dosia knew that the dog was Lawson's. She sprang up and locked the door, +but her dream had vanished. She had a tingling consciousness that she +was to meet Lawson at dinner. She made up her mind to be very dignified +and cool toward him; she rehearsed the manner in which her eyelashes +would fall, the politely bored expression of her forced attention, the +casual tips of her fingers as they touched his in the conventional +handshake of greeting--all of which would emphasize the fact that he had +now no particular interest for her, if, indeed, he had ever had any. + +But, after all, he was not at dinner, which was a relief, and yet a +disappointment: when you have sharpened your weapons, it is only natural +to want to use them. Lawson did not appear the next day, nor the next. +Once she heard him coming in very late at night, and in the morning he +had gone before she breakfasted. A couple of times in the late +afternoon, when the dog came trotting ahead through the hall, she had +slipped aside, breathless, as from some peril escaped. It was the third +day after her arrival that he suddenly made his appearance in the +drawing-room, where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of +music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought the air too damp +for Dosia. + +She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she had prefigured, +and could have flagellated herself for the color that she felt +enveloping her from brow to throat under his cool, appraising eyes, as +he bent over the piano as if to help her with her search. + +"What do you wish to find?" he asked in a businesslike way. "Perhaps I +can assist you." + +"Thank you, it isn't necessary." + +She held her head at an unresponsive angle involuntarily, so that she +might not see his face, which had struck her as unexpectedly younger and +better-looking than hitherto. + +"I see that my sister has fitted up a little music-room for you. Have +you done much practicing there yet?" + +"Some." + +"You are not homesick in your new quarters?" + +"No." + +"Let me hold that portfolio for you." He interposed a dexterous hand. +"Oh, don't thank me--you see, if you drop it, courtesy will oblige me to +pick up all the music. This is the first time we've met since you have +been in the house; I've been so patient that I deserve more than to have +little cold, hard monosyllables thrown at me." + +"Patient!" + +"Haven't I seen you slip out of the way when you thought I was coming? +I'm accustomed to the phenomenon." The lightness of his tone did not +hide the bitter strain under it. "Really, I'm not lacking in perception. +I wished to give you time to get inured to the sad fact that I live +here; and you need not have changed the time for your lessons last week, +for I have no regular time for my daily exodus at present. If you _will_ +keep your head so persistently turned away, you might as well utilize +the position. Play me something." + +"No, you play for me," returned Dosia, glad of the chance to divert his +attention from her. + +"I might play 'Greeting,' since I'm not going to get any." + +He seated himself on the piano-bench she vacated, and played a few +strains absently; there was that in the low, sweet chords among which +his fingers strayed that could not but enchain. She forgot her aloofness +to listen. Presently he said: + +"Who is my rival?" + +"What do you mean?" She started up, and stood with both arms resting on +the lower end of the grand piano, staring at him. + +"I could not think that blush was for me--that beautiful color that +stole over you when I came in. It couldn't be for me, when you have +avoided me so pointedly. So I concluded, of course, that it was either +the reflection from that brick wall out there, or was called forth by +the thought of my rival." + +"I will not say that it was the brick wall," said Dosia, yielding to the +light, heady spirit he always roused in her, with, also, the little +under-knowledge of her secret dream. + +"Then I will not say it was the rival," said Lawson. He added in a lower +tone: "And I wouldn't give it up to any rival; I saw it--it was mine." + +"You claim a great deal," returned Dosia, wishing that she had the +strength of mind to go and leave him, yet loath to lose a moment of this +converse. + +He shook his head as he answered gently: "No, you are mistaken there; I +claim nothing. I have no rights--only privileges. I hope it's going to +be my privilege to have a little of your charming society in the next +few days. I shall be at home, perforce; I've lost my position." + +"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Dosia, with her quick sympathy. He raised one hand +deprecatingly, while the other still weaved in and out in a pianissimo +accompaniment. + +"Sorry? For me? Oh, that's not the thing to say, at all. You should +condemn my inability to keep the place." + +"Why do you talk like this?" asked Dosia, with a pained feeling. + +"Why do you run when you see me coming?" He flashed a quizzical glance +at her. + +"I don't," she began to say, but her words trailed off into an +inarticulate murmur. + +He had played a chord or two more to her silence before he stopped to +lean forward and say: + +"Why did you avoid me on the train? You need not trouble yourself to +answer. Some kind person had warned you against being too polite to +me--and you took the warning like a good little girl. It has been borne +in upon me quite a number of times that I do not exactly command respect +in this community. I assure you that I know my place." + +"But, oh, why don't you _make_ people respect you?" cried Dosia. "Why +don't you make them? If you really try--oh, if I were a man, I wouldn't +sit quietly and say such things. You can do anything if you really try." + +"Can you?" He smiled with indulgence at her copy-book wisdom. "Well, +perhaps you can, if there's sufficient impetus to the effort. There +really isn't with me. When I was a boy--you'll tire yourself if you +stand up any longer. Come and sit over here by the fire." + +She followed half mechanically to the sofa on which he arranged the +cushions for her, seating himself in the other corner, where he leaned +forward, looking, not at her, but at the fire. His personality was so +strong that each inch that lessened the distance between her and that +lithe, sinewy figure and the dark Oriental face brought a corresponding +thrill of magnetism to Dosia--a subtle excitement which drew her into +its spell. The confusion which had clouded her at first was gone; she +felt luminously clear, in preparation for some great moment of +confidence, in which her mission would be to help and sustain. She broke +the silence presently to say, with a sweet and halting diffidence, +through which her earnestness showed: + +"I want you to tell me. You began to say--I want to know about when you +were a boy." + +"When I was a boy I made a wrong start. Heaven knows, it wasn't my +fault! I was good enough before that--religiously inclined!" He leaned +forward and struck a log with one of the fire-irons, sending a shower of +sparks flying upward. "Where do you think I learned half the bad I know? +At a camp-meeting! But I won't go back to the past--it's a mistake. +Only, I came here literally 'on suspicion.'" + +"Yes," said Dosia, with her clear spirit-voice; "and you tried to work +up from under it." + +Lawson dropped his chin into his hands, looking moodily ahead. "I'm +afraid not always. Sometimes the contrary." + +"Oh, oh," breathed Dosia, in a whisper. + +"If you want me to tell you the truth--! Your relatives are quite right +in ordering you to avoid me. There has never been anybody, you see, to +really care whether I kept straight or not." + +"Your sister?" + +[Illustration: _He played a chord or two more to her silence_] + +Lawson shrugged his shoulders. "It would, of course, be pleasanter for +Myra if she hadn't me on her mind, and Leverich has done his best, I +suppose. I'm not groaning--just telling you the bare facts. Living 'on +suspicion' is demoralizing in the long run, that's all; one lives down +to an opinion as well as up to it, you know. There's never been anyone, +since I was a child, to really believe in me, so there's nobody to be +disappointed." + +"_I_ will believe in you," said Dosia, with the vibrating tone of her +emotion. Her clear eyes looked at his as if to convey strength and +warmth and all that was uplifting straight to his heart. + +"You had better not." + +"I will believe in you!" Her tone had even greater insistence. "I know +what it is--myself--to be with those who do not care. You are not as +other people think you! You can be good and noble. You can"--her voice +sank to a whisper--"resist temptation. If one prays--it helps; I know +that." Her voice rose steadily again, after a tremulous silence: "You +can never say again that no one believes in you, for I believe in you." + +"And care?" asked Lawson. + +His eyes glittered and his face worked with some unusual emotion. + +"And care," assented Dosia, with the same unwavering eyes and serious, +childlike candor of tone. + +He stooped and gently pressed his lips to her hand as it lay upon her +gown. "You are the very sweetest child! I--" He stopped abruptly, and +walked away to the window. The next moment Mrs. Leverich was rustling +into the room. + +If she suspected an interview too confidential, she showed nothing of it +in her manner. She had come back to take her guest out driving, after +all--the sun was shining. Dosia ran to get ready, tingling--was it from +the exaltation or the excitement of this interview, with its unexpected +compact? She trembled with the pathos of it all. She passed each phase +of it rapidly before her mind, to convince herself that there was +nothing in words or feeling, no, nor in that reverential homage of +Lawson's, that could be interpreted as disloyalty to the unknown to whom +her future belonged. + +Mrs. Leverich was waiting with a magnificent wrap of velvet and fur for +Dosia to put on in the carriage over her street costume. + +"I was sure you were not warm enough yesterday," she explained. She +leaned forward to call to the coachman: "James, you may drive first to +Benning's. We are going to get some chocolates to take with us, dear; I +know girls always enjoy themselves more if there is a box of chocolates +handy." + +"Oh, Mrs. Leverich!" said Dosia gratefully. + +"And we will stop at the greenhouse and get some flowers for you to wear +to-night at dinner; you know, George Sutton is coming. I want you to +look particularly well." + +"I don't care to look particularly well for _him_," objected Dosia, +stiffening. + +"No, of course, you don't _need_ to; but, still, a girl should always +look as pretty as she _can_; she can never tell who is going to see her. +James, ask at the express-office if there are any packages. I sent for +some of the new books. Yes, that is for me. Now, my dear, you'll have +something nice to read." + +"You are too good, Mrs. Leverich; you are just spoiling me," said Dosia. + +In these three days she had been the recipient of so many gifts and +favors that it was difficult to know how to vary her expression of +gratitude. She had already been presented with a white China silk +tea-gown, the scores of two of the latest light operas, and an amethyst +belt-pin. The little music-room had been fitted out appropriately from +floor to ceiling, and framed with palms; Mrs. Leverich had spent the +whole of one morning with a corps of servants, planning, directing, and +approving. Dosia had hardly time to frame a wish before it was +forestalled. + +"It is such a comfort to me to have you here," continued Mrs. Leverich, +sinking back among her cushions. "You may take the Five-mile Drive, +James. If I had only had a daughter! I said this morning to Mr. +Leverich, 'I am going to pretend she's my daughter while she's here.' +You don't mind, dear? You will let me have you for my very own?" + +"Yes, indeed," answered Dosia, with the warmth of youth. + +"I have never wished for a son. Boys are a terrible responsibility. +There is Lawson." + +"Yes," said Dosia, as she paused. + +"He has always been such a trial. We have given him every advantage--and +he _has_ every advantage naturally; but it's no use. Mr. Leverich says +he will make one more effort for him, and if that is no use he must go. +We have simply done all we can. I would not speak so openly to you if +you had not been staying in the house, but you could not help hearing." + +"Hearing----?" + +"Yes, these nights when he has come home so late. George Sutton brought +him home Tuesday night from the train--he couldn't walk alone. I was so +ashamed at the noise!" + +"Oh!" breathed Dosia in a horrified undertone. She added, "Has he always +been like this?" + +"More or less. At first it was only when he went away; but he couldn't +keep any position long, because he _would_ go away for days and days at +a stretch. And now it is getting to be--_any_ time. I'm sure we have +done everything in this world to keep it quiet. And Lawson has every +advantage naturally; it is only this--drinking. Of course, no one can +have any confidence in him; I always felt that it was hopeless, from the +first." + +No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation as a ray of +light gilding this dark and slimy morass, the sight of which had +unexpectedly revolted her. In Balderville only the lower class of +inhabitants drank; no young man of respectability or position was to be +seen among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of her through +which she had promised to have faith? He had not posed as devoid of +offense; on the contrary, he had confessed to guilt, only she had not +quite understood. Sin as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite +decently presentable; it is only when it is particularized that the +monstrosities below are hideously revealed. + +"It must be a great grief to you," she said now, with earnestness. + +"Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much on my mind after +this winter; he has put his foot down. The nights I have passed! I'm +always fancying that he is run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; +it's the most dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream +on the way back--don't forget; and those cakes at Mrs. Springer's--they +were ordered yesterday. Where was I? I forget. Oh, yes--the most +dreadful strain! and I felt that I ought to speak about him to you, as +you are staying under my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after +the disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep up a +pretense any longer. You can see just what he is yourself." + +"Yes, indeed," said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent. + +Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot bouillon on her +return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted the logs in Dosia's +room with her own fat, white, beringed hands, and enveloped the girl +enthusiastically several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in +confirmation of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty about +the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely responsive in +spirit to the least show of it, material demonstrations were unnatural +to her; she was shy of being touched even by her own sex. It was only +with little children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in +caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster had appealed so +strongly to her imagination was partly because of the fact that the +comfort it conveyed transcended the strangeness of contact. To be +pressed now to a warm, semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds +of mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarrassed gratitude, which +she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate to the occasion. And she +was weary of trying to elude the vacillations of her mind. She would +keep her promise to Lawson,--yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the +more he needed it,--but she would be very careful, too; she would be +_very_ careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to spring into being. + +He was at the dinner as well as Mr. Sutton. The sixth person was Ada +Snow, with the well-bred composure which concealed her innate shyness, +and in the white dotted swiss she had worn for ten years past, ever +since she had graduated, in fact, and which still looked decently +presentable. Dosia was gay and conversational, as she was expected to +be, the party being hers; she had began to feel the daughter of luxury, +if not of Mrs. Leverich, and accepted the honors with the easily +accustomed grace that is born of admiration and security, conscious +every moment through it all of that bond between herself and Lawson. He +looked boyish and happy. Later, in a talk about skating, he offered to +teach her to skate the next day if the ice held, and Mrs. Leverich, to +whom Dosia looked, expecting her to invent some excuse, approved at +once, and planned to send for skates the first thing in the morning. His +quizzical eye seized unerringly on the signs of withdrawal in her, and +brought the blush of compunction to her cheek, while Mr. Leverich +jocosely deplored that he could not take the office of trainer instead. +Mr. Sutton, who had sat by her at dinner, and hovered amorously over her +in the way a girl detests in a man she does not care for, might have +been mysteriously rebuffed by the suggestion of Lawson's intimacy, for +he devoted himself for the rest of the short evening to Ada Snow, who +dropped into one of her statuesque angles on an ottoman, and talked to +him in her low, trained voice with modestly confidential deference, +until he left, quite early. His attention to Miss Snow had not kept him, +however, from picking up Dosia's handkerchief twice when she happened to +drop it. + +Billy Snow created a diversion by coming in at half-past ten for his +sister, and stating casually that he had seen the doctor's carriage +stopping at the Alexander house as he passed. + +"As you passed _now_?" cried Dosia, startled. "Are the children worse?" +An unacknowledged compunction, which she had felt through all her +pleasures, at leaving the sick household, sprang swiftly to the front. +"Oh, I'm so afraid Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there +at once and see!" + +"If they only had a telephone," began Mrs. Leverich, for the twentieth +time. "I can send----" + +"Oh, if I could only go myself!" interrupted Dosia, looking utterly +miserable in her sudden wild anxiety. + +"You could have the carriage--but James is asleep." Mrs. Leverich looked +almost as miserable as Dosia in her baffled hospitality. "But if you +don't mind walking----" + +"No--oh, no!" + +"Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some wraps in the hall; +I'll pin your dress up, so that you won't need to take the time to +change it. _Must_ you go, Ada? Then you can all walk down together. Mr. +Leverich would have offered to go with you himself, I know, +Dosia,--wouldn't you, Joseph?--if it were not for his cold. But Lawson +can take you, of _course_!" + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, had plenty to keep +her hands busy, and yet, as there was no particular anxiety attaching to +the disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the +unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of thought at the +same time, so that little occupations really occupied only a small +corner of her mind, and the larger part was continually taken up with +the subject of larger interest--herself. While she rocked the children +and sang to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, and +took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, she was +unceasingly traversing a country wherein she walked alone and in exile. +The quarantine had shut her in more rigorously upon herself; there were +now no distractions. Her husband was more anxious about the children +than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so much was thrown +upon her; he had wanted to get a trained nurse at once, but after her +assurances that she did not mind staying in, that her exertions did not +tire her, and that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted +this version without further question or comment, and went about his +affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her own department. It is +a well-known fact that quarantine, the observance of which is exacted +down to the last second of its limit from the women of a household, does +not affect the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin +thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as possible +about being much with the children. He stood obediently outside of the +nursery door and talked to them from there when Lois said, "You had +better not come in." When she refused a service offered by him, he did +not press it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his +dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again to spend the +long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, at houses where there +were no children to be kept from contagion, and where he could talk to +men. He was really so busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in +any way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to be able to +leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, besides, a curious +hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously resented--she seemed to +hold herself aloof from him, and there was no allurement to follow. That +temporary indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, +with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference because they do +allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship at will--this had been +pushed too far. It is a dangerous thing to let love slip away, even for +the pleasure of regaining it. + +It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should have to stand +alone now. She could have done this willingly if she had been by +herself, but to stand alone in this dual solitude, where she might have +had support--she could not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with +the pity of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, +red-eyed, upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of her +effort. + +There is little provision made in most girlhood for that independence of +living which marriage unexpectedly forces upon a woman, in many +instances, in almost as great a degree as when she is thrown out into +the world upon her own resources. To be high and fine, rational and +spirited, cheerful and loving, quite by one's self, without audience or +applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the muscles are little +trained. A woman can reach almost any height on a spurt for praise or +recognition; but to get up, sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, +care for the children, order the meals, as a rational human being whose +business it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no +personality attached to it--to have it taken for granted that she would +naturally order her life as suited her best, and desired no +interference--it was like being pushed out into the cold. + +If Justin's indifference was unexplainable to Lois, it was equally +mysterious to him that she expected daily to be urged to seek amusement, +to "take something" for her cold, to stay in if it were wet or to go out +if it were dry, to avoid overwork, not to sew too much, and to be sure +and rest in the afternoon--all the little kindly round of woman's +sympathies that keep the heart warm. Justin had been brought up in the +good old-fashioned way by a mother who, while requiring obedience and +honesty from her sons, never required them to think of anybody else. In +his conduct now he did entirely as he would be done by. He hated to be +noticed, himself, in little ways; he did as he pleased, with the +directness that is the inheritance of centuries of predominance, but he +had become affectionately parrot-wise in some of the sentences he found +were conducive to his wife's happiness. In his new absorption he had +forgotten the sentences; he was deeply occupied with his own affairs. +When Lois said to Zaidee, "Mamma is busy; she cannot attend to you now," +she exemplified unconsciously her husband's present position toward +herself. Many men regard women primarily in the light of children; and +the more occupied Justin became in his own affairs, the more reluctant +he became to talk of them at home to this child who was his wife. Her +vivid surprise at normal conditions, the unnecessary worry and shallow +generalization of ignorance, irritated him. He became more and more +taciturn, though he was always kind and affectionate, even if his +kindness and affection lacked, as she felt, the true inner glow; but in +the state of mind which Lois had now made her own, no evidence of +affection, however great on the part of her husband, would have meant +anything to her more than momentarily, for it was seen afterwards +through a medium which at once distorted and nullified, and not even the +complete absorption in and surrender to herself that she craved could +have satisfied the insatiable. She was drifting to a place among the +great and terrible company of nerve-centered people, revolving wheels of +centripetal force, sweeping into their own restless orbit all with which +they come in contact as they go on their devastating way through the +universe. + +Dosia, on the night when she had hurried down to the house with Lawson +Barr, had found nothing out of the ordinary; the doctor had been delayed +until late by a case of more insistence, that was all. She came down, +however, on other evenings, luxuriously cloaked and wrapped, rosy and +smiling, with radiant eyes, and held rapid conversations with Lois +down-stairs, while Lawson waited in the hall, or sometimes went on +farther and came back for her. Lois herself had never considered Lawson +of importance, although she had warned Dosia against him; his +sympathetic manner now pleased her. As the children improved, the +measles threatened to become at once epidemic and more virulent in the +town, so that it was thought wise to avoid comment by having no +communication by daylight with the Alexander household. Dosia was thus, +for a few minutes at a time, Lois' one social link with the outside +world, for Justin, as she said bitterly, told her nothing. After three +weeks of solitude and self-communing the barriers began to give way. + +She was glad to hear her husband come in one afternoon much earlier than +usual. Something had been said the day before about her going out for a +drive. Her heart beat at the sound of his voice, and she ran down-stairs +eagerly, but checked herself, as she had a way of doing lately, when she +came near him. Her face, devoid of expression, was lifted to his to be +kissed; for all her forbidding manner, she was ready to thaw if he would +only take the trouble to shine directly upon her. It was a beautiful +spring afternoon, and she felt the invading monitions of happiness, in +spite of herself, as he kissed her, saying at once hurriedly, if very +kindly: + +"I've got to dress and take the five-o'clock train back to town." + +"Oh!" She was chilled to ice. "Won't you be here to dinner?" + +"Why, no. Girard--do you remember my speaking of him? He's sent me a +ticket for the Western Club dinner in town to-night. There will be fine +speaking; not that I care for that particularly, but it is really +important for me to be there. There are not many tickets; I'm in luck to +get one." He stopped irresolutely. "You don't mind my going? I thought +you'd be with the children." + +"No, I don't mind your going." She added under her breath, "And it +wouldn't make any difference to you if I did." + +"What did you say?" + +"Nothing." + +"If it were any place to which you could have gone with me, I would have +refused." + +"Oh!" + +He looked at her uneasily, but said no more; she heard him whistling +softly as he was getting dressed. In reality his conscience was +uncomfortably pricking him. He felt that he had let her bear too much +alone, that he might have been more thoughtful--he couldn't exactly tell +how. He registered a mental vow to take her out somewhere the very first +chance he got. + +He came in the nursery to say good-by to the children and to her. She +asked: + +"What train will you take back to-night?" + +"I don't suppose I can get anything earlier than the twelve." + +"You mean the one that gets here at a quarter to one?" + +"Yes, of course. Don't sit up for me." + +He was gone; the door had closed behind him--he was gone. Almost before +she realized it, he was gone. It could not be--she was not ready to have +him go yet! There were so many things she had meant to say to him. She +would have rushed to the door to call him back, but Redge cried out for +her. She took him from his crib and ran to the window with him, over the +floor that was strewed with play-things--Justin was already nearly out +of sight. He must, he must, he _must_ come back again! He must. She +willed it so intensely that he must feel it, if he loved her, and come +back. If you willed things hard enough, they happened; people said so. +She was willing, willing, _willing_ him to come back. She watched the +clock, and listened for the sound of the passing train. Seven minutes to +walk to the station--seven minutes to walk back again, as she willed him +to come. Thirty minutes had passed; he had stopped here, there, or yon, +on his way home. An hour--and he had not come! She had willed in vain. +He had gone. + +From six o'clock until a quarter of one,--until one o'clock, for the +midnight train was always late,--that was seven hours. Seven hours to +wait, seven hours to think and think. She gave the children their +supper; she laughed with them, she played with them, helped the nurse +undress them, sang them to sleep, with that dreadful undercurrent of +thinking all the time. She had her dinner, eating without knowing what +she ate, trying to take a long while at it. Afterwards she lighted the +lamp in the little drawing-room, took out her sewing, and sat down there +to wait. There were five hours and a half yet. + +There was a ring at the door-bell about eight o'clock, which proved the +herald of little Mrs. Snow, holding in one hand a provisionary vial. + +"No, thank you, I won't sit down," she said, in answer to Lois' +invitation. "I just ran over to see if you could let me have a little +cough medicine for William to-night, he has a little tickle in his +throat that keeps him coughing, I knew it was no use telling _him_ to +get any medicine, so I said to Bertha, 'Bertha, I'm just going to run +over to Mrs. Alexander's and see if she can lend me a spoonful of cough +mixture.' I'll have my bottle renewed to-morrow." + +"I'm sorry," said Lois, wondering at her power of suspending a +heartbreak, "but we haven't a drop left in the house." + +"There is so much bronchitis around now," continued Mrs. Snow, oblivious +of the fact that the same impetus that had brought her as far as the +Alexanders' would have taken her to the druggist's. "No, thank you; I +can't sit down." + +She stood by the mantel in a drooping attitude that gave her a plaintive +effect, in combination with her soft crinkled black garments and her +small white, delicate, finely wrinkled face. Mrs. Snow had, as a usual +thing, only two tones to her voice--the plaintive and the inquisitive; +the former was in evidence now. + +"There is so much bronchitis around now. I think if you can take hold of +it at the first beginning, with a little cough medicine, when it's just +a tickle in the throat, you can often save a great deal." + +"I suppose you can," said Lois. She felt a vague duty of conversation. +"Isn't William well?" + +His mother shook her head. "No, my dear, not at all, though he will not +own it. I ask him every time he comes in the house how he feels, and +sometimes he won't even answer me." She heaved a sigh. "You're not +looking well yourself, Mrs. Alexander; you mustn't take care of the +children too hard." + +"Oh, nothing ever hurts _me_," said Lois in a hard voice. + +"I'm glad they're so nearly well. I met Mr. Alexander to-night on his +way back to town. It was a pity you couldn't have gone with him; if you +had sent for me, I could have come and stayed with the children as well +as not." + +"Oh, thank you," said Lois. + +"I suppose you don't see much of Miss Dosia?" + +"No, not much as yet." + +Mrs. Snow cleared her throat deprecatingly. "A number of people have +been asking me lately if she and Mr. Barr were engaged." + +"Engaged! Why, of course not," exclaimed Lois contemptuously. "There is +not the slightest question of such a thing; in fact, she dislikes him. +He simply takes her around because she is at his sister's." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Snow, "Miss Dosia dislikes Mr. Barr--does she really, +now! I'm sure I told everybody that I knew they couldn't be engaged, +although they do seem to be so much together. So she dislikes him; Ada +dislikes him, too. There's something about Mr. Barr so--well, you can't +exactly tell what it is, can you, but it's there; something that's not +exactly like a gentleman--not like Mr. Sutton. Ada likes Mr. Sutton so +much. It's such a relief to me to find that Miss Dosia is so sensible; +she's a sweet young girl--a little fond of attention, perhaps, but many +young girls _are_. No, I thank you, my dear, I cannot sit down, I _must_ +go now. I don't think you're looking well; you must be careful and not +overdo." + +"Oh, nothing hurts me," said Lois again, with a peculiar little smile. +The insinuation about Dosia did no more than swell the undercurrent of +bitterness by another unnecessary drop. + +And Mrs. Snow was gone. Lois had not wanted her, but how alone it was +now! Even Mrs. Snow had seen that she did not look well--had pitied her. + +The children were asleep up-stairs, the maids were in the kitchen. The +clock in the hall ticked. People walked past the house: a man +alone--another man; young people, laughing and catching up with those +ahead; some shuffling, hobbling toilers; then the light step of a woman +returning from work; then another man. Occasionally, but not often, a +carriage rolled down the street. The footsteps were always clear and +distinct from the corner below to the upper crossing; when it was a +train-time, there were more footsteps coming and going--between trains +only the solitary footsteps again. She heard the man in the house across +the street run up the steps to his front door, and turn the key in the +lock. The door opened and shut behind him. The clock in the hall struck +the half-hour--it was half-past eight. Oh, if there had been a life-time +of misery in that last half-hour, what was there to come? An eternity, +an eternity of desolation! + +If she were to will him now to come home, if in the midst of the +glittering lights and flowers he could hear her cry to him,--"_Justin, I +want you!_"--he would _have_ to come. "Justin, I want you!" She rose and +paced the floor, sobbing out the words. No, he would not hear her--he +did not want to hear her. Perhaps he was laughing now. She would have +gone to _him_, if he had wanted her, though she had had to crawl upon +her knees through thorns and briers. Ah, how she would have gone! A rush +of blinding tears filled her eyes. He did not care. She had been ready +to cling to him, and sob her heart out on his breast, and beg him to +love her and kiss her and stay with her, and he had not seen. She had +asked--in the tone that mutely pleaded--_You will not leave me so +long?_--"The train that gets here at a quarter to one?" and he had +answered, "Yes, of course." That was all. If her lips had touched his so +coldly when he had said good-by, it was because she had longed to have +him notice it, and ask her why. But he had not noticed the coldness, he +had not asked her why. He had not wanted any more warmth in her. He did +not care! + +There came swift moments in those long and passion-freighted hours when +the darkened, distorted vision cleared in wonderful flashes that brought +the healing of light. In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, +not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of +frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy +mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had +won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly +beloved, the true owner of her husband's heart, a woman whose work it +was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more +his helper, his lover. Even as this glimpse was shut out again, there +was the piercing thought: If that were real, and what her darkened eyes +beheld untrue! Things are what they are, no matter how one's distorted +vision sees them. If it were really true, no matter how she saw it now, +that she was a wife tenderly beloved, with happiness within her grasp, +and a miserable woman indeed only that she was blind to its +possibilities! She had said, _The train that gets here at a quarter to +one?_ with what a longing for him not to leave her, and he had answered, +_Yes, of course_. Nothing could make those words any different. And she +wanted him, and he did not care--he did not care. Justin, Justin! The +long, long, torturing fangs of self-pity had her by the throat. + +The house was silent, the children slept, the maids had gone up-stairs. +The hours wore on into the night. The footsteps passed up and down the +street only at long intervals. The air grew chill in the house. In the +quiet, the watcher could hear the trains far, far off across the flats. + +At twelve o'clock the spring rain began to fall, gently at first, and +then in torrents, coming straight down with a rushing sound that blotted +out both trains and footsteps. And the train was late, as she had said +it would be, it was after one o'clock when Justin ran up the steps with +that firm, quick tread of his, opened the door, and came in. His face +was bright and eager; he was full yet of the pleasure of the evening, +and anxious to make her a sharer of it. He turned to speak to his wife, +and the glow on his countenance died out instantly as with a breath from +the tomb. + +Lois sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing him. The light had gone out +in the lamp, and the one gas-burner above, with its meager flicker, cast +the room into the desolate half-shadows that speak of the late hours of +the night. She had worn a scarlet house-gown in the evening; the +trailing folds swept the floor around her slippered feet now, her bare +arms gleamed below the sleeves that only reached beyond the elbow. +Around her was flung a gray cloak, buttoned askew at the throat, and in +one of her folded hands she held a black lace scarf. Her face was white, +and her large eyes stared straight before her rigidly, yet with a wild +gleam in them; as he looked at her she rose and moved as if to pass him. + +He stepped forward with his dripping overcoat half off. + +"Where are you going?" + +She made no answer, but looked at him as she edged on farther to the +door. + +"Where are you going? Answer me." + +Her lips stiffly framed the word: "Out." + +"Out! What do you mean?" He spoke roughly, in a terrible anxiety and +anger mixed together. "What are you working yourself up to all this +foolishness for?" + +Again she did not answer. + +He went on more sternly, yet with an undercurrent of entreaty: + +"Come in here and take off those things and be rational. Why do you look +at me like that?" + +"You don't care--any more." + +Oh, if he would snatch her to him now, and press her to his breast, that +she might feel his protecting arms around her! If he would kiss her now +with the kisses she remembered, and love her, and comfort her, and send +this horrible spirit out of her! How could he not know that that was the +way to exorcise it, that it was what her spent soul craved? How could he +keep from putting his arms around her when she was in agony? + +Never in his life had her husband been less likely to do so. The wild +defiance in her eyes would have made any woman repulsive to him; he had +all a man's horror of a "scene," mingled with a deeper disgust that she +should be the actress in it, and his anger was the more that he felt the +whole thing to be unnecessary. Underneath this anger, however, was the +sense of responsibility for his wife's welfare, such as one would have +for a child, no matter how outrageous. + +"You don't care!" She whispered the words again. + +"No, I don't care for you when you act like this." His voice was even +sterner now; it was time that this travesty came to an end. + +She stared at him as before. "Then I'll go!" she said wildly, and +slipped past him out of the door and into the rain, running with swift +yet uncertain footsteps down the black, wet street, listening, listening +all the time for him to follow--listening as she ran. She walked more +slowly now as she listened; she had gone nearly a block already toward +the river. Oh, would he let her go? For one awful moment she feared that +this phantasm might become a reality; and yet she knew, as well as she +knew that she lived, that he would not let it be so. Yes, yes, there was +his quick, sharp tread at last, gaining on her. He walked like the angry +man he was, but the sound brought a furtive thrill of bliss to her. How +strong he was when he was angry! He had had to notice her at last; he +could think of nothing but her now. + +She trembled as he came up to her. He only said in a matter-of-fact +tone, "It's time to stop this now; you'll get wet." He took her by the +arm and turned her around, heading for home; the mere touch of his +guiding hand on her arm sent warmth through her icy veins. She trembled +as her feet tottered beside his, her strength suddenly spent with the +breaking up of her long passion. + +Neither spoke as they walked home. When they were in the house again, he +unfastened her cloak with awkward fingers, and took the dripping scarf +from her wet hair, throwing them on a chair. + +She leaned her head upon his breast, clinging to him with an +inarticulate murmur for forgiveness, and he smoothed her hair for a +moment. She raised her face to his to be kissed, and he kissed her. She +humbly asked nothing; she would be satisfied with anything now. She went +up to her room, as he bade her, and when she was in bed, he came and sat +down by her, and held the hand she mutely placed in his, as her +imploring eyes asked. But he had to put a force upon himself to do it. +The whole play was distasteful and repugnant beyond words to him; it +weakened every bond that bound him to her. He sought for no +self-analyzing causes. He had so much care upon him now that more than +ever in his life before he needed diversion, sympathy, love, rest--rest +above everything else on earth. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +To live in the same house, to meet not only at the accepted times, but +in all the little passing ways--on the stairs, coming in and out of the +door; to meet also in all the little unpremeditated ways that are really +premeditated--the going to the library for a book, the searching over +this, that, and the other, with all its pretended inconsequence and +surprise; the abstraction of two people from the same room at the same +time on different pretexts; the lingerings while the minutes grew toward +the hour, the sudden hurried partings at a foot-step, the reunion for +just a moment more when the foot-step did not come that way--all this +unnoticed and casual intercourse with its half-secrecy and hint of the +forbidden becomes a large factor in its relation to after-events, when +the participants are a man and a woman. There is no influence so little +regarded for the young by those in authority as the tremendous influence +of propinquity. + +Among all the social comings and goings at the Leverichs', the +excitement of Lawson's presence held its place with Dosia. The sudden +sight of his olive profile and his lithe figure, his cool, appraising +gaze, his "Well, young lady?" with its ironic tone that yet conveyed a +subtle kindness, his lazy, caressing expostulation, "Why not, when we +are friends?"--these things made heart-beats that Dosia took pains to +assure herself were of a purely Platonic nature, when she stopped at +rare occasions to take tally of her emotions, though there was a +continual unacknowledged inner protest, in spite of her yielding, which +made her resolve each day to withdraw a little on the next. But they +never talked of love; they talked only of goodness, or art, or music, or +about the way you felt about different subjects, or little teasing +things, like why she drew her mouth down at the corners when he looked +at her, or why she had seemed to disapprove the night before. They were +bound together by the hope of higher things. She met him always in the +morning with the bright uplifting smile that said, "I know you will +repay my confidence--for _I_ believe in you!" + +"I really wish Lawson would go away," said Mrs. Leverich, one day, as +the two sat over their afternoon tea together. + +"Why?" asked Dosia, with the suddenly concentrated composure his name +always brought her outwardly. "I thought you said last week that he had +improved so much." + +"Oh, yes, he's had one of his good streaks lately; and he _is_ a sweet +fellow when he's nice--he was the dearest _little_ boy! Lawson can twist +me around his little finger when he wants to; he knows that he can get +money out of me every time, even when he oughtn't to have it. But he +can't keep up this sort of thing long, you know, he is so restless; +there's bound to be a breakdown afterwards. I dread it; the breakdowns +get worse, now, every time." + +"Perhaps there will be no breakdown, after all," said Dosia, in an even +voice, but with that sudden deep sensation of disenchantment which his +sister's words always brought to her, and which lay upon her spirit like +a living thing, dragging her fancy in chains. It was not alone Mrs. +Leverich's words, either, that had this power; when anyone spoke of +Lawson it brought the same displeasing uneasiness, followed by the +wonted eager remorsefulness later, when she saw him. But through each +phase one foundational sense held good--he was not at all the kind of +man she would ever want to marry; the whole attraction of the situation +was in the fact that one could be so nobly intimate, and still keep off +the danger-ground. Once or twice he had seemed to be infringing on it, +and then she had turned him aside with sweet solemnity and additional +inner excitement. + +These were days indeed! It was Lent, but there were all the minor +pleasures of luncheons and card-parties, and little evening +entertainments held at Mrs. Leverich's hospitable mansion. It mattered +not whether there was anything going on in the town or not; society +focused at her house, with Dosia for the central point. When she thought +of going back again to Lois it was with a blank shiver. + +Lois, indeed, had not been well lately; the children were out of +quarantine, but she had a sore throat, and kept her room under the care +of a trained nurse. Dosia had not seen her, but only Justin, who looked +tired and older. Dosia was not to return now until after Easter and +after the ball--Mrs. Leverich was going to give a ball for Dosia; it was +to be, in a sense, her "coming out." + +She had by this time become quite used to her position as daughter of +the house, accepted luxuries as a matter of course, and even suggested +improvements, when she found that it pleased Mrs. Leverich to have her +do so. She received that lady's embraces gracefully, brought newspapers +unasked for Mr. Leverich, and gave orders to the maids for her hostess. +She had grown accustomed to being waited on, petted, made much of, and +given presents, and blossomed like the rose under this vernal shower of +kindness; her dress, her manner, her very expression, betrayed the ease +of elegance. She did not like to own, even to herself, that long +conversations with Mrs. Leverich were somewhat tiresome when the subject +was neither Lawson nor herself, and she learned to get out of the way of +too many tete-a-tetes. This did not keep her from having a fervent +gratitude for all the blessings of the situation, and a real love for +the dispenser of them. Now, when the time of her stay was narrowing to a +close, she clung to each day as if it neared the end of life; every +pleasure was doubly dear in that it was the last of its kind. To be +sure, the fairy prince had not arrived as yet--Bailey Girard, who had +come to the house while she was still a stranger to it, had been half +across the Continent since. It is one of the shabby jests that life is +always playing us, that two who have met once as wayfarers on the same +road, with the memory of that one meeting so curiously vivid and +intimate that it seems as if the fate of the next turning must bring +them within touch again, are yet kept out of sight or sound of each +other for miles by the slight accidents of travel. Fate, when we count +upon her, is apt to be extraordinarily slow in working out her +fulfillments. + +Dosia hailed with delight a proposition made by Mrs. Leverich to get up +a party and drive over one evening to a neighboring town to hear a +lecture given there by a friend. The lecture was nothing, the friend not +a very great attraction, but the expedition in itself gave an excuse for +a drive, and a supper on the return to the Leverich mansion. It was +early April, but the weather was unseasonably warm, and there was a +golden moon. They were to go in a "barge"--the local name for a long, +low, uncovered wagon, with two lateral seats, holding about thirty +people. Mrs. Leverich had insisted on plenty of lap-robes and extra +wrappings and even umbrellas, in spite of remonstrances. She herself +could not go, but there were plenty of chaperons, little Mrs. Snow +having been pressed into service as a substitute at the last moment, +with every promise of mild evening weather especially beneficial to +rheumatism. + +Some one had a bugle that woke the echoes as the caravan drew up at each +door to gather the different segments of the party. Dosia felt wild with +glee as she bundled into the barge, amid merry shrieks and laughter, and +found herself seated by Mr. William Snow, while Lawson took the place on +the other side of her. Ada and Mr. Sutton were farther down, with Mrs. +Snow near them. Opposite Dosia was a chaperon of the chaperons. + +Dosia hardly knew what she was saying as she laughed and talked with the +crowd, while Lawson conversed across with Mrs. Malcolmson, but the sense +of his nearness never left her. Billy at last got a chance to say to her +in a low, intense voice: + +"Why are you always listening for what _he_ says?" + +Her glance followed his, and her color rose. + +"Dear little Billy is rude; Billy must learn manners," she retorted +gayly, but with a sharpness below the gayety. + +"I don't care whether it's rude or not. Here I'm sitting by you for the +first time this week, and you don't seem to hear a word I say. I've been +trying to talk to you, and you don't pay the slightest attention." + +"Oh, you poor child!" said Dosia. "Would it like some candy?" + +"It's no use talking to me like that," returned William stubbornly. "I +know you're a year older than I am----" + +"Two," interpolated Dosia. + +"It's seventeen months and three days--but that's nothing to do with it. +It's no use your trying the grandmother act--I could marry you, just the +same, if I _am_ younger. Mrs. Stanford is two years older than her +husband, and Mrs. Taylor is five years older than hers. Lots of people +do it--but that's not the point now. I'm miles older than you in +everything but years. I've had experience of the world, and you +haven't." His belligerent tone softened, and he looked at her tenderly +as he towered above her, his blue eyes alight. "You need somebody to +take care of you. I don't care whether you believe it or not, I know +what I'm talking about. I wish you'd drop that fellow." + +"Why?" asked Dosia, with dangerous calm. + +"Why? Because--you ought to know. He isn't a gentleman; he's no good. He +isn't _fit_. If he was, don't you think he'd look out for you, and not +take advantage the way he does? If he had a decent spark in him, he'd +never let you be seen with him; he knows it, if you don't. Why, there +have been times I've seen him when you wouldn't pick him up off the road +with a pair of tongs." + +"Mr. Barr, will you fasten this cloak around me?" said Dosia, in a clear +voice. + +She turned with her back to William and leaned a little closer to +Lawson, after he had helped her arrange the garment. Lawson had made +every resolution to take no advantage of his position, but he was not +proof against this alluring moment; his warm hand with its long, +tapering fingers sought hers under cover of the lap-robe, and held it +while he still talked with apparent unconcern to his matronly vis-a-vis. +Once he looked around at Dosia with those teasing eyes full of laughter, +and yet of something more. She could not drag her hand away without +betraying the struggle, as his closed more tightly over it, though her +riotous heart beat so that she feared it must get into her voice, and +there was an odd feeling as if she were doing some one a wrong. Her +fluttering was intoxication to Lawson. + +They drove for five miles with the early spring moonlight shining +silverly through the last rosy haze of the sunset, the air sweet with +the scent of green grass and dewy blossomings. + +Lawson did not look at Dosia as he helped her out of the wagon, nor did +he come in to listen to the lecture, through which she sat pulsating at +the thought of the drive home, desiring yet fearing it. Would he be near +her then? Her question was answered. He helped to put everyone else in +the wagon, and they two came last. This time their opposite neighbors +were a young couple engrossed in each other. Dosia's quick eye took in +the situation at once. She was determined not to speak first, and they +rode for a while in silence; then he moved nearer, and asked in a low +tone: + +"Why don't you look at me?" + +"Why did you--hold my hand?" She spoke in a whisper that he had to bend +his head to hear. + +"I might tell you a good many reasons--but one will do. I am going away +for good." + +"What?" She turned breathlessly, with a quick pang. The night had grown +very dark, but she could see the gleam of his eyes and the outline of +his olive face as it leaned over her. "Why?" + +"Because--" He stopped, and his quizzical look changed into something +deeper. "I believe I ought to. I've had a sort of an offer out West, and +it's time I made a change." + +"Is it to lead a new life?" asked Dosia, with deep and tender solemnity. +Mrs. Leverich's words came back to her; this, then, had been all +planned. + +"Oh, let us always hope so!" said Lawson lightly. "Who knows? Perhaps +I'll turn into a highly respectable individual and make money. You can't +be respectable without money, I've tried it, and I know. I had a sort of +an opening in Central Africa which my dear brother-in-law pressed upon +me, but I decided against it." + +"Central Africa!" + +"Yes. I appreciated Leverich's feelings in the plan--you can't get back +easily from Central Africa, if you get back at all. So I'm going, for +good or bad, to a nice little mining-camp in Nevada, where you get your +mail every six weeks or so, and where you can go down into your grave +any way you please without scandalizing your friends. I'll be really +quite out of the way." + +"Out of the way!" Her heart leaped with pride in him. How little William +knew of this man! + +"Yes, out of everybody's way--and yours, dear little girl. I'm not good +enough for much, but perhaps I'm good enough for that." + +"Oh," said Dosia, distressed and fascinated by his tone of real feeling. +"But why--oh, I shall miss you so much--and think of you--so much!" Her +voice broke. "I can't bear to think of your going off in this way--so +lonely." + +There was a shriek from farther down the barge. "It's beginning to rain, +it's beginning to rain!" A wild scramble ensued for cloaks and +umbrellas. A furious shower was descending almost with the words, and +the whole party slid off the two long seats into the straw on the bottom +of the barge, and cowered under the carriage-robes pulled up around them +for a shelter, showing only a mass of umbrellas above. + +Lawson's quick movements had insured Dosia's protection. + +"You are not getting wet at all?" He bent over her tenderly under the +enveloping umbrella. + +"Not at all," she whispered. + +It was as if everything were a confidence now. She reverted to the +subject of their conversation: + +"Oh, do you think you will really not come back?" + +He laughed. "Yes, I mean it--now. Of course, you know that's my chief +fault--my resolutions are too frequently writ on sand." He spoke of his +own weakness with the bitter yet facile contempt which too often +enervates still more instead of strengthening. "Yes, I mean it. Do you +wonder I took your hand? Are you sorry I'm going--? is my little friend +sorry? She mustn't be sorry; you know, nobody is sorry--she must be glad +to get rid of inc. Speak--and say it." + +"No," whispered Dosia. + +He pressed her arm close to him, as he held her hand and pulled the +wraps around her, shifting the umbrella as the wind changed. One of the +men in front lighted a lantern and held it out in the rain at arm's +length, to glimmer ahead in the pitchy darkness and show the road to the +driver, who held the horses at a walk. The wagon lurched and tipped in +mud-holes and unexpected ridges and depressions, running up once on the +edge of a bank, while the couples on the floor of it screamed and +laughed. There were muttered rolls of thunder in the distance. Rain in +the night had always brought back the scene of the disaster to Dosia, +but she only thought now that she could not think. All of her that lived +was living at this moment here. + +"Why are you so silent?" he murmured headily, after an interval. + +"I don't know." + +"Is there anything else that you want to tell me?" + +"I don't know." + +"Oh, yes, you do." His voice had grown dangerously tender. "What is it?" +He waited again, bending nearer. "Don't you want me to leave you--is +that it? Don't you want me to leave you?" + +"No," whispered Dosia. + +"Then I'll stay!" + +His arm slid exultingly around her waist, and his hand pressed her head +down upon his shoulder, while she submitted passively, a thing of +suffocating heart-beats and burning blushes, captive to she knew not +what. "You oughtn't to have said that, you know, for now I'll never go. +I'll stay with you. Hush--keep still!" He held her firmly as some one +spoke from the front, and he answered in a loud tone: + +"Yes, Mrs. Malcolmson, it's the right road. Swing the lantern a little +further around, Billy. Yes, that's the old white house; we turn +there--it's all right." + +He kept his attitude of attention for a few minutes, looking from under +the cover of his umbrella at the huddled heaps and the umbrellas in +front of him. Then Dosia felt that he was coming back to her. She tried +desperately to rally her forces, to think if this was the man with whom +she wanted to spend her life, her husband for all her days. Alas, she +could not think! Some giant, unknown force had sapped her power of +thought. She weakly took his two hands and tried to push his arm from +around her waist and to raise her head from his shoulder. His arm did +not move; her head sank back again. His lips were on hers--which no man +had ever touched before,--and those lips now were Lawson's. + +"There was _one_ girl kissed to-night," announced Mrs. Snow, as she took +off her numerous layers of shawls and worsted head-coverings in +household conclave after her return from the Leverichs'. + +"It was perfectly disgraceful! Is there any hot water on the stove, +Bertha? I want a glassful to drink. I hope you left a piece of stale +bread in the oven for me, I feel a little need of something. Oh, yes, of +course there was a supper, we had lobster Newburg and champagne, but I +didn't take any; a cup of beef-tea or a little cereal would have suited +me much better. It's a mercy if I haven't taken my death of cold. It was +Dosia Linden's goings-on that I was speaking of; she's a bold sort of a +piece, evidently, quite different from what I thought. Sh--William's +gone up-stairs, hasn't he?" Mrs. Snow dropped her voice mysteriously. +"My dear, she and Lawson Barr sat hidden under an umbrella all the way +home, and never spoke a word. You can't tell _me_! Never said a word +that anyone could hear. When she came into the dining-room at the +Leverichs', her face was scarlet, and she couldn't even look at anyone, +though she talked enough for ten while he played some queer thing on the +piano. You can just ask Ada." + +Miss Bertha had preserved an immovable countenance throughout the +monologue, but her eye now sought her sister's and received a swift +glance of confirmation from that silent and discreet damsel. The +confirmation brought a shock to Miss Bertha--fond of the trivial and +unimportant in gossip, the scandal which hurt the young devolved a hurt +on her, too. As mothers who have lost children feel a tenderness for +those who do not belong to them, so Miss Bertha, who had lost her youth, +felt toward the youth in others. Her mother's small mind yet had an +uncanny power of partial divination, gained from years of experience and +espial, that irritated while it impressed. + +"Her face was probably red from the wind and the rain," said Miss +Bertha, in a matter-of-fact tone, regardless of her mother's +contemptuous sniff. "What kind of a time did you have, Ada? Did you see +anything of Mr. Sutton?" + +"Just a little," replied Ada temperately. + +This time it was the mother's and Miss Bertha's eyes that telegraphed. +"Ada, my dear, you may take my shawls up-stairs. She was with him _all_ +the time. I hope he saw enough of Dosia Linden's bold actions to disgust +him, at any rate. Yes, my dear, everything was managed very beautifully +at the Leverichs', and it was all very elegant; but she is a little +common--Mrs. Leverich, I mean. She was really quite put out because we +hadn't driven back faster. There was a Mr. Girard who had come out from +the city, and she wanted Miss Dosia to meet him before he left--he had +just come back from somewhere in the West. She really made quite a time +about it. And there's a sort of vulgar display about her that I don't +care for; you can see she's Lawson's brother. Oh, well, don't take me up +so, Bertha; you know what I mean, well enough. You have such a sharp way +with you sometimes, like your dear father's family. +William--_Wil-liam_!" + +"Yes, mother." + +"I want you to come down and put the cat out and lock up at once,--oh, +you did, did you?--and kissed me good night, too, you say? I didn't +notice it. And did you empty the water-pan under the ice-box, and bank +up the fire, and water the big palm? Oh, very well. Then, +William--Wil-liam! I want you to come down again, now, and take a +rhinitis tablet, after the dampness of to-night." + +There was an emphatic sound from above. + +"He's shut his door," said Miss Bertha. + +Ah, what does a girl think who has given up all her bright anticipations +for a man whom she knows is not worthy? Lawson had pressed Dosia's hand +only when he said good night,--there were others around,--but he had +looked at her lips. She knew how his felt upon them; their touch--more +than all the murmured elusive questions and answers--had made her his. + +She knelt down by the big chair in her room, and buried her hot face in +the cushions, to try and think at last, with a suddenly sinking heart +that feared when it should have rejoiced. He had told her that no one +could make him go, now that she loved him; he would stay here. "And work +for me?" she had asked, and he had answered, "Yes, and work for you." +She should be so happy now, so happy! The perspective down which she had +always seen her future was suddenly shortened; this was the end. Lawson +Barr, the man she had been playing with at a delightful, enthralling, +forbidden game, he was the man with whom she had promised to spend her +life, her husband for all her days; that which was to have been her +uplifting was instead something for her to carry. Suppose that she had +more of those awful, clear-sighted moments which had disenchanted her +when his sister spoke? No, no; that must not happen, that must not! +Dosia had acquiesced in what was said about him, with the large-eyed +uncomprehension of the girl who pretends that she understands what +everyone expects her to; it meant something--she was afraid to have +anyone tell her what; she pretended to understand, because she was +afraid some one would let her know of half-divined, unmentionable +things. He was not--good; he drank--people despised him: but he clung to +her, and she had let him kiss her, oh, not only once or twice, but many, +many times. She knew in her heart, she knew, that he was what they said; +but it was to be her work to help him always. When she had been with him +hitherto, there had always been the excitement of feeling that the claim +was temporary, to hold or not, at will, a mere pretense of a claim. Now +it was real. She was bound forever! + +Was the moment of disenchantment upon her now? She did not deceive +herself--too late she owned the truth. What was the worst? He was +weak--then she must be strong. She thought of herself in years to come. +People said you couldn't reform a man who drank--her father had been +very strong on this point. She had thought of it all before, to be sure; +but now--now it came home. She imagined herself keeping his house for +him, getting his meals--perhaps with children; waiting, listening +suspiciously for his returning footsteps; trying to keep him +"straight,"--perhaps not succeeding. Yes, she must succeed! People +looked down on him--so they would look down on her. And while her clear +and pure nature reasserted itself, and thought and tried pathetically to +find out truth alone, her cheeks still burned, her senses owned his +sway. Those intoxicating moments forced themselves upon her, whether she +would or no. But the truth--the truth below that, the truth was that she +did not love him. You can carry any burden if you have the strong wings +of love, but she had them not. What was to have been the crowning of her +maidenhood had come to this--a sacrifice to the baser, and without love. +Nay, not that, not quite that! The maternal spirit in Dosia rose and +yearned over this outcast, whom nobody loved, with a tenderness which +owned no thought of self; she must never think of herself any more, but +only what was best for him. She was to be his wife. The word brought a +choking feeling, with its thrill of mystery. She was so young--so young! +Could she keep up a sacrifice always? Why had she not been able to think +in this way until now? The answer came clearly in her search for truth: +because she would not let herself do so. She had been warned--she had +been warned. + +"Pray--it helps." That was what she had said to him. Ah, yes! She slid +to her knees; her only real help was in Heaven. She must keep her +promise! She must always love him whom nobody loved, and trust him whom +nobody trusted. Perhaps--perhaps when he kissed her again--She put the +thought away, so that she, a child, might speak straight to God. And +while she prayed Lawson was coming down-stairs with his hat on. + +"You are not going out?" His sister barred the way, in a purple velvet +gown, and laid a plump jeweled hand on his sleeve. The lights were +already out in the drawing-room, and, beyond, the servants were removing +the last traces of the supper. + +He did not answer for a moment, looking at her with hard eyes, void of +expression save for a certain tenseness. It was a look she knew. Then he +answered roughly: + +"I'm going in on the twelve-o'clock train with some of the boys. It's no +good to talk." + +"Lawson! not now." Her tone was angry. "Go up-stairs--to bed." + +"Well, I guess--not!" said Lawson. He swept her hand from his arm, and +was out of the door and running quickly down the steps before she +turned. + +[Illustration: _It was a look she knew_] + +Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart beating with a +rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. She was his, though she had +been warned. + +Warned--yes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world of chaperons and +parents and guardians and people who knew! + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + + +It was the night of Mrs. Leverich's grand ball. Dosia was "coming out." + +The preparations had been going on for the entire week since the drive. +The great house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the floors waxed, +the state silver brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half +a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand orders, to +select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement that was made or thought of +required discussion--what furniture was to be taken up in the attic and +what left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, where +the musicians were to take their stand; how many small tables would be +needed for the serving of the supper that was to come from town. +Leverich himself had said there was to be no expense spared, and he +would see to the wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of +his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there had been a +delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her own name on them, and tried +to realize that this was indeed what Mr. Leverich called "her party." He +had insisted, at his wife's suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her +gown for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty thanks for +his kindness. There was something about Mr. Leverich, with all his outer +coarseness, that Dosia liked. When she spoke in a certain way, he never +answered wrong, as his wife sometimes did; he understood. + +Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her lover. After +her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him at the breakfast to +which she came down very late the next morning, she was relieved to hear +that he had suddenly been called away earlier. He might not be back for +a day or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring herself +to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a matter of course by +everyone else. But there had been a note from him, after the two days +were up, postmarked from the city--a mere line that said only, "For the +girl I love." + +"Will your brother be back for the party?" she asked Mrs. Leverich, +trying to keep her color steady and ask the question casually. + +"Oh, yes, indeed," the sister answered readily. "He may be back at any +minute now. He'll be here on the day itself, for certain; he knows I +want his help about some things." + +Without Lawson's actual presence Dosia could fashion him into the man +she loved, and pitch her own key of living higher. With that higher +thought and her simple earnestness of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, +more subtly sympathetic with others; she was no girl any longer, she +said to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his eyes +claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the thought. There was a +strange tingling emotion in everything connected with him. Ah, he would +be worthy--he must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence +supplied him with the halo. + +All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the Leverich house; +it was impossible to overestimate its importance. Every woman was having +a new dress made, or was absorbingly renovating an old one, and every +man was sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody was +asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball was to be outside +the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,--she had taken cold on the +ride,--but it was to be one of Miss Bertha's rare appearances in public; +she was to chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former was to +be one of the receiving party. + +Dosia's week had been one surging thought of Lawson, mixed with wild +anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time on the eventful night +he had not arrived. + +"Girard is coming, you know, after all," said Leverich, as they +assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. "I met him in town +to-day, and was lucky enough to get him. That's the right man for you, +Dosia." + +"For me!" Dosia laughed, with her rising color. "Mr. Leverich, you are +always trying to find the right man for me. I don't want him!" + +"You haven't met him yet," said Leverich wisely. "He's the only fellow I +know that I'd be willing to have you marry. I told him you were waiting +for him." + +"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Dosia, in consternation. + +"Now, don't get excited," said Leverich, smiling broadly. "I said he'd +have to work to get you--that you weren't the kind of a girl that came +when she was beckoned to. Oh, I put your stock 'way up." + +He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. "No, I'll +confess! I didn't say anything of the kind; I was just romancing. I did +tell him he'd meet a pretty nice girl--you don't mind that, do you?" + +"You don't deserve to be answered," said Dosia. She went and hung over +his chair caressingly for a moment before escaping from the room. + +In spite of his recantation, the effect of having been offered to Mr. +Girard remained the real situation--one of sudden and great intimacy. +The thought of his coming to-night added to her happiness; it brought +the deep pleasure inseparable from his name--it was as if something both +calm and protecting had been added, like the comfortable presence of one +who understood. He would sympathize, if he knew, with that high motive +of duty which must uphold her, whether the glamour held or failed. He +would know what it was to feel that you must be true. + +As she went through the still unlighted upper hall, she came face to +face with some one in an overcoat, a man who carried a valise. + +"Lawson!" she whispered. + +For one dreadful moment she saw him in that way she feared; shallow, +insincere, unstable--was that all? Was there something indefinably odd, +indefinably strange? Then she saw only the gaze that recalled +everything--he loved her! That thrilling thought carried all before it; +her pulses leaped to own him master, with a sudden lovely, trusting joy. + +"No, no!" she whispered again, with falling eyelids, as he made a +movement toward her. His lips touched her hair. "Not here! Some one is +coming." + +"Later, then!" he murmured assentingly, with a gleaming eye, as she +eluded him and ran down the corridor to her own room. + +This was to be her ball, her ball! Her lover had come. Her dress lay on +the bed, a white and airy thing; her white pearl-beaded slippers were +below it on the floor. Every chair was piled high with dainty whiteness +of some sort. Her dressing-table, with its candles and flowers, was like +a shrine for her beauty. The mirror reflected her with loosened waves of +hair and bare arms and feet, her bath-robe slipping from her shoulders. +It reflected her again, fresh and gleaming, low-bodiced, short-skirted, +and a-tiptoe in her pearly slippers; and again in filmy, trailing +petticoats, and half-covered neck, sitting like a pictured marchioness +of old in front of the dressing-table, in the shine of the candles, +while Mrs. Leverich's maid piled the fair hair high on her small head. +And every few minutes there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought +in a box of flowers, great, delicious bunches of red and pink and white +roses, and sweet peas and lilies, and violets tied with yards of +lustrous satin ribbon. Dosia held out her arms for them, the dear, +fragrant, heavenly things, and hung over them, and buried her face in +them, and kissed them, before she sent them down-stairs, with loving +protest that she should have to be parted from them until she should +follow. She had not so much as dreamed of this richness of flowers for +her! It was because it was her ball, her ball! And her lover had come. + +There was a noise of carriages driving up to the house--the intimate +friends who came first. The musicians below were beginning to tune their +instruments, and the twanging of the strings touched an intenser chord +of exhilaration. The long-ago dance at the bazaar--was Dosia to have +another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? For this was +her ball--her ball, and the dance would be with Lawson as her lover. Her +feet kept time to some fairy measure of her own. + +[Illustration: _Like a pictured marchioness of old_] + +Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white cloud +enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in pale green satin, came +into the room and clasped a little thread of pearls around the slender +white throat before she went down-stairs. + +Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but pale and cold; +there was a sick look around her mouth. One or two girls ran in for a +peep at the debutante. And was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent +up word that they were all waiting for her. In a moment--Dosia would +come in a moment. If they would leave her, she would be down in a +moment. The music had struck up now, and swung into the preparatory +strains of Lohengrin. Dosia would come in a moment. + +As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone in her +chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. Her spirit cried out +that this instant could never come again; she wished to feel it, to know +it, forever. The mirrors reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, +as she leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... Then she +opened the door and went down the hall to the stairs. + +Dosia's beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends on the soul +within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. Never in her life +would she look again as she did to-night, with that lovely, childlike +joy of anticipation; deeper happiness might be hers, but never happiness +of the same kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one +shaded his eyes with his hand. + +The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which led to a broad +landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway of the brilliantly +lighted drawing-room across the hall. In there were grouped Mrs. +Leverich, Lois, the rest of the receiving party, and the Misses Snow, +standing near a table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, +their long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich was +at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside him was George +Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; at one side in the +half-shadow of some palms was another man. Something in the turn of the +shoulders was oddly familiar to Dosia--he moved suddenly, and for a +second she stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was +Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her than it was +followed by another: Where was Lawson? + +"Here is our princess descending the stairs," announced Mr. Sutton +gallantly. + +At that instant, as Dosia stood on the landing, with one slippered foot +on the lower step, facing her little admiring world, somebody began to +come down the flight at the side with hurrying, stumbling feet. It was +Lawson in evening dress, his olive cheeks flushed, his eyes reckless. +The men who were watching knew at once that, in common parlance, he was +"not himself." Dosia, her sweet eyes raised to meet his, only knew, with +a quick, half-frightened thrill, that he looked strangely unnatural. He +seemed to see no one but her, as he caught up to her, saying jovially: + +"You can give me that other kiss now." + +[Illustration: _Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling +feet_] + +Did his hand but touch her white shoulder in that suggestion of vulgar +familiarity that branded her as with a hot iron in its scorching, +blinding shame? She could not blush, the blood had all gone to her +stricken heart and left her white as a snow wreath. Then Leverich sprang +up the steps and took Lawson by the arm, dragging him forcibly back into +the upper regions, as some of the guests began to descend. Dosia must go +in, helpless, toward those staring faces. Would no one come to her aid? +Justin? He had turned to speak to Lois. Billy Snow? His face was +averted, his eyes on the ground. Bailey Girard, her helper once, the +hero of her dreams, the man his friend had pledged for succor--Bailey +Girard stood motionless. + +It was George Sutton who came forward and, placing her hand in his arm, +led her with old-fashioned courtesy to her place beside Mrs. Leverich. +The whole incident had taken barely a moment. Dosia stood up, pale and +graceful, artificially self-composed, greeting the many people who began +to pour in, smiling above the enormous bouquet of bride roses that she +held, and chatting in a high, thin voice. Her one immediate thought was +that she must stand up straight, as if nothing had happened--stand up +straight and talk. + +"Has the girl no feeling?" thought Lois contemptuously. "Why, she did +not even blush!" + +Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling of death in the +heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! What did those men think of +her, or those women who saw? What could they think her like, to have +given any man a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson +done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulder--he had asked her for +a kiss. That was all. It was nothing and it was everything--something +that could never be undone. Through the dancing, through the flirting, +through all the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. +What had happened? It was nothing--and it was everything. Each effort +for comfort brought with it that horrible, blinding shame to surge over +her more and more, as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch. + +How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly showed the people, +how gay the scene! One partner after another claimed Dosia. She danced +and danced, and did not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all +that throng there was not one person whom she could call her friend. She +fancied that people were whispering as she passed them. She had but one +prayer--that the evening might end. She met Justin's eyes from time to +time; they looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered +expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, and she was right. +Those who are responsible are squeamish as to the appearance of delicacy +in the conduct of a young girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, +yet there was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such a +thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed them all in an +awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich briefly, "She had better +come back to us at once," and Leverich had answered, "Well, perhaps it +would be best." + +William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming into the ball-room +at all. He stood, instead, leaning against a doorway, and watched +everyone who approached Dosia; his brows were lowering, his attitude +aggressive. He saw that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was +not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, bent +solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glass of water, and +William saw that she had lapsed momentarily on a corner divan by his +sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful eyes raised to the elder woman, +but he did not hear the younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice: + +"Oh, Miss Bertha, I'm so glad to be here with you!" + +"Thank you, my dear." + +"I'm homesick," said Dosia, with a white smile. "Oh, Miss Bertha, I'm so +homesick!" Her fancy had leaped passionately to the security of the +untidy cottage in the South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it +were really the loving home she longed for. + +"Homesick at a ball!" said Miss Bertha, with a kind inflection. She +patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly with her thin +ungloved hand. "You oughtn't to be homesick now, you must enjoy +yourself, my dear; you're young." + +Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosia's burning eyes. +If she could only have stayed with Miss Bertha! But she was claimed for +the dance. Why must you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never +end? + +The evening was half over when she found herself in front of Mr. Girard, +with some one hastily introducing them. He had just come from up-stairs +with several men, all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he +hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively fancied that +he had kept out of her way on purpose, though she remembered hearing +Leverich say that he did not know how to dance, and so did not care for +balls. Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, his +personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, as something +unaffectedly charming and magnetic. He was tall, straight, and well +made, with the square shoulders she remembered, and the easy, erect +carriage of a soldier. The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his +long, thin face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, all +gave an impression of young vitality and power that accorded well with +her thought of him. His eyes were light gray, and not very large; Dosia +had seen them full of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to +acquire a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had thought +of him so long and intimately that his presence near her brought its +exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. She looked up at him. It might +help even her to be near anyone as strong as that, if he were kind--as +kind as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, +unconsciously, as she half extended her hand. + +Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed formally as he said: +"Pardon me, but I am just on my way to the train." + +He stepped aside, leaving a free passage for the youth who came pushing +by to claim his dance with her, and was gone almost before she knew it. +He _could_ have stayed--he did not want to talk to her! She was lonely +and disgraced, and the thought of Lawson an agony. + +She did not see that, as Girard went into the hall, some one gripped him +there and said fiercely, "Come with me!" Billy Snow, his eyes blazing, +had pulled him out on the piazza beyond. + +"You've got to answer to me for that," he stuttered. "You've got to +answer to me for that, Mr. Girard. Why did you turn away from Do--from +Miss Linden like that?" + +"What right have you to ask?" questioned the other man coolly, but with +a sudden frown. + +"None, except that I--love her," said Billy, with a queer, boyish catch +in his voice. "Yes, I love her, and she doesn't care a snap of her +finger for me. But I don't care; I love her anyway, and I always shall. +I'm proud to!" The catch came again. "She may step on me, if she wants +to. You saw what happened here to-night when that damned brute--" He +made a gesture toward the hallway. + +Girard made no answer, but looked into vacancy for a moment. Before the +sight of both of them came a vision of Dosia in all the radiance of her +beautiful innocence, the flush on her cheek, and the divine, shy look in +her eyes when she first raised them to Lawson, before it changed to---- + +"You saw what happened here to-night," said Billy, with renewed heat at +the other's silence. "I don't care what _he_ said, or what you think; +she's no more to blame than----" + +The other stopped him with a quick, peremptory gesture. + +"You mistake," he said shortly. "You're speaking to the wrong person. I +saw nothing. I don't know what you mean, and I don't want to." + +"What!" cried William, staring. + +"Let me give you a piece of advice," said Girard incisively, with an odd +whiteness in his face. "Don't you know better than to bring the name of +a woman into a discussion like this? If a girl needs no defense--by +Heaven, she needs none! And that's the end of it. Only a fool talks." + +"Yes," said William, with a sharp breath, after a pause,--"yes; thank +you--I'll remember. But when I meet _him_--" He stopped significantly. + +"Oh, whatever you please!" said Girard, spreading out his hands lightly, +with a smile and a quick, steely gleam in his eyes that cut like a +scimitar. + +"Sorry I've got to go--my overcoat is just inside. No, I don't want to +drive, I'd rather walk. Good-by!" + +He went off in a moment, with long strides, down the carriage-drive to +the station, the dance-music growing fainter in the distance. She was +dancing still. Her face--her pure, sweet, pleading child's face--went +with him through the moonlight. He knew that look! When helpless things +were hurt like that--He couldn't talk to her that night, nor touch her +hand, because of that burning desire to leap on Lawson Barr and choke +the life out of him first. + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + + +The morrow after the ball was drawing to a close in darkening clouds and +an eerie, rushing wind. It had been one of the gray, cold days of +spring, with a leaden sky and a pervading damp and chill--a long, long +day to some of those in the Leverich house. Rumor whispered that Lawson +had been found upon the highroad in the early morning, unconscious, with +his face and head cut, and that there were tracks yet on the side piazza +from the feet of those who had carried him in from the muddy roads. +Rumor said that the wounds had not come from accident. The doctor's +carriage had been there, and had gone again; but the doctor might have +come to see Miss Linden, who was also said to be prostrated and in bed, +or Mrs. Leverich, who was excused to callers as having a headache. The +great house was silent and deserted-looking inside, except for the +servants engaged in setting it to rights and carrying the furniture down +from the attic, where it had been stored overnight. + +Only a few even of the inmates--of whom Dosia was one--knew that Lawson +was in an upper room, with his head bandaged, sobered and sullen, +watching through the wide windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as +he waited the completion of the arrangements that were to take him at +nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had put his foot +down this time; Lawson was to go. He was bringing his vices too near +home, concealment was no longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past +rose to make a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected +Dosia's. + +"It's no use," Leverich had said to his wife, in a stormy interview that +morning, "I won't have the fellow here another day. I'll ship him off to +Nevada, and not another penny will I give him while he lives. He can +sink or swim, for all me; and he _will_ sink--down to hell." + +"Oh, don't say that you won't send the poor boy any money," pleaded his +wife. + +"Not a red. I've had enough of him, Myra. _You_ know! As long as he +could appear half-way decent, I was willing to carry my end, but he's +going to the dogs now too fast for me. I've done with him; he goes +to-night, whether he's able to or not." + +Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. Mrs. Leverich, +impelled by what sometimes seems to be the very demon of hospitality, +still pressed her to stay longer, while knowing that her absence would +be a relief. + +"It is too bad that you want to go like this," she had said crossly, +sitting in gorgeous negligee by the side of Dosia's bed, her handsome, +richly colored face showing mean lines in it. "I looked upon you quite +as a daughter; I thought we would have such nice times together. Why on +earth couldn't you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? Then none of this +would have happened." Her tone was complaining, as of one compelled to +suffer unnecessarily; there was such a total absence of warmth as to +prove that shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated +unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her an injured feeling; +if there had been a glamour around Dosia the glamour had departed. What +little depth the nature of Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of +blood, which made her resent any imputation on Lawson. + +"I suppose you'd like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have your meals in +your room," she went on in a businesslike way. "I'll send Martha up to +pack your trunk for you--that is, if you insist on going--if she's not +too busy. The servants have so much to do to-day." + +"Oh, I can pack it myself," said Dosia. What did one stab the more +matter now? She took Mrs. Leverich's hand impulsively. "You've been so +good, so kind to me--you've given me so many pretty things,"--her voice +sank to a whisper,--"it doesn't seem to me that I ought to keep them +now. I want to give them back to you." + +"What is it you say?" asked Mrs. Leverich impatiently. "You speak so +low, I can hardly hear you. Oh, these!" She turned to a little pile of +jewel-cases on the table. "Why, I gave them to you to keep. Well, if you +feel that way about it--These pearls, perhaps, but the pins were quite +inexpensive; do keep them, really, there's no reason why you shouldn't, +you know." + +"I'd rather not," said Dosia; and her hostess gathered the things when +she went out. + +It was a long day--a long, long day. From the bed where Dosia lay, she +saw the gray clouds shifting, shifting endlessly above through the +opening made by the parted window-curtains. What had happened? +Nothing--and everything; nothing--and everything! + +Gossip reigned in the village, carrying Dosia and Lawson up and down its +gamut, even reaching the high crescendo of a secret marriage, with the +inevitably hinted smirching reasons therefor. The Leverich ball promised +to supply subject-matter for many a day to come. Mrs. Snow, from as +early as eleven o'clock in the morning, sat with a white worsted shawl +wrapped around her--the sign of elegant leisure--and rocked in the +green-bowered and steaming little sitting-room between the geraniums and +the begonias while awaiting visitors. She greeted each one who "ran in" +with the invariable remark: + +"I suppose you know all about the Leverichs' ball last night. Well, what +do you think of the goings-on there?" being intent mousingly on getting +every last little cheesy crumb of detail, and peacefully unaware of +deep, rich stores concealed in her own family. The incident of the +stairway was common property, but Miss Bertha had told nothing of +Dosia's little heart-breaking confidence to her. Her mother was amazed +at the very conservative disapproval expressed by this elder daughter, +turning for confirmation of her own views to her callers. + +"I thought, before all this, that the girl was a bold thing," she +announced in virtuous condemnation. "It's all very well for you to try +and defend her, Bertha, but neither you nor Ada would have gone on in +that way.--Oh, yes, Mrs. Willetts, my dear, he kissed her on the +stairs--just as they all say. But that was the least part of it. They +say his _manner_ to her--And he was--yes, exactly. Oh, a man doesn't +take liberties, in _such_ a way, unless a girl has allowed a good deal. +It's evident that they've--been--pret-ty--intimate. I'm sorry for the +Alexanders, they'll have a handful in her. Bertha, will you knock on the +window? The man with the eggs is passing by, and we want three. +_Bertha!_ you are not paying any attention to me. She is not herself at +all to-day, Mrs. Willetts, she looks so yellow. Yes, you do, Bertha. +Don't you think she's very yellow, Mrs. Willetts?" + +"Perhaps it is the light," suggested Mrs. Willetts evasively. + +"No, it's not the light; it's the late hours," said Mrs. Snow. "I did +not want her to go to the ball, late hours knock her up for days. +William shows the effect of it, too--his right hand is all swelled up. +He says he doesn't know how it got so, but I think it's from dancing too +much." + +"Mother!" expostulated Miss Bertha. + +"Well, my dear, I don't see why you speak to me like that. I'm not in my +second childhood yet! I don't know why he couldn't get a swelled hand +from dancing; some of these young girls are so athletic, they grip your +fingers like a vise--I know _I_ find it very unpleasant. Don't you +remember--no, of course you don't, but I do--how poor General Grant's +hand was puffed out to twice its size from people shaking it? The +picture of it was in all the papers at the time." + +"I don't think William danced much," said Ada. + +Mrs. Snow pursed her pale lips and shook her small, neat head. + +"All I know is that he was quite worn out; he slept so heavily that he +never heard me at all when I rattled at his door-knob and called to him +at three o'clock this morning that I thought I heard some one on the +porch below his window. It's very odd--I've heard it before. I don't +think it's cats, and I'm so afraid of tramps." + +The statuesque Ada looked up with a swiftly startled expression. + +"There are always tramps around," said Mrs. Willetts. + +"Yes, I know it, and it worries me to have William out so late alone. +William is nothing but a child, though he is so tall," said Mrs. Snow. +"Of course, last night his sisters were with him." She paused before +harking back to the appetizing theme. "They say Miss Linden is still +staying at the Leverichs'. I shouldn't think she'd stay there an hour +longer than she could help. They say Mrs. Alexander refused to have her +back again at first--did you hear that? They say----" + +And in Dosia's room, where she lay alone, the long, silent day wore on; +the gray clouds shifted, shifted above. What had happened? Nothing--and +everything. + +If Leverich was to keep his word about Lawson, the preparations for his +departure must be speedy. They also took money. Leverich could contract +for any amount of expenditure to be paid in the future by large drafts, +but to hand over five hundred on the minute in cash was at certain times +and hours an irritatingly difficult procedure. He cursed the necessity +now, with a fervor born of the disastrous ball, and the late hours, and +the further fact that stocks had gone down suddenly and he was out on a +deal. The gray clouds meant also, in the city, clouds of dust, which the +raw wind swept smartingly into his eyes every time he had occasion to go +out. As he was getting ready at last to go home with the purchased +tickets, he looked up and saw Justin coming in. Leverich nodded to the +other's greeting, but did not otherwise return it. + +"I won't ask you to sit down," he said curtly; "I want to catch the +four-o'clock train out. How are you getting on? All right?" + +"All wrong." + +"What's the matter?" + +"This," said Justin, with a white light in his eyes, and holding out a +letter which the other took half reluctantly, relapsing mechanically +into the chair by his desk, while Justin dropped straddle-legged into +another opposite, his face looking over the back of it, around which his +arms were clasped. He went on talking, while the other slowly unfolded +the paper and looked at the heading. + +"You remember those first big consignments we sent out after the fire? +Well, the whole output was rotten!" + +"Great heavens!" said the other, sitting up straight, with his eyes +stuck to the lines. "Are you sure it's as this says?" + +"Sure? It's the sixth letter of the kind we've had in ten days; three +came in this morning's mail. The packing-room is full now of returned +machines--what we'll do with the rest I don't know. A couple of firms +want the instruments duplicated; the rest want their money back. We +talked big at first, thought it was a mistake--that's why I didn't speak +of it to you--but it's no mistake; the whole output's rotten. The bars +are rusted and bent, so that everything's out of gear; it would cost +more to repair the machines than to make new ones." + +"Were the bars those you got from Cater?" asked Leverich. + +"Yes." + +Leverich whistled. + +"It's no fault of his, those he used were all right." + +Bullen says they must have been a fraction off size for us, and that did +the business. Heaven only knows how many more letters we'll get! I don't +see how we're to pay up and get out of it, as it is." + +"Yes," said Leverich, throwing the letter down on the desk, drumming on +it with the ends of his fingers. Then he shrugged his big shoulders as +if shunting the burden from them as he rose. "Well, I must go. Sorry I +can't help you out, but Martin's away now. By the way, when you can pay +up on that interest, we'll be glad to have it. We've been going pretty +easy with you, you know, but it can't last forever; we've got to have +our money, as well as other people." He had not meant to say anything of +the kind, but the bad news and the inferred appeal had accented the +irritation of the day. + +"Oh, certainly," said Justin, with a swift gleam in his blue eyes, and a +pride that could be large enough to make contemptuous allowance for a +little meanness in the man from whom he had received benefits. He had +counted on Leverich's ready help in this trouble, but there was more +between the two men than the money--from the first moment of meeting +this afternoon, Dosia's name, unspoken, had correlated in each a little +hidden spring of antagonism. One of Justin's womenkind had misused +Leverich's hospitality; both resented the fact and her enforced +departure. How many business situations have been made or marred by +domestic happenings, no history of finance will ever tell. + +And still the long day wore on in Dosia's silent room. + +The preparations for Lawson's going were all made before the nightfall +that was to cover his exit. His trunk had gone; his coat and hat and +hand-luggage were stacked conveniently together on a chair in the empty, +cleared-out room. + +"And this is the last money you'll ever get from me," Leverich said, +counting out the bills on the table by which Lawson sat uneasily, his +head and part of his swollen, discolored face bandaged, his dark eyes +glancing furtively from under their heavy lids. "There are your tickets, +they'll carry you through. Peters will be at the door with the carriage +at nine to take you to the train here, and James will go over with you +to the terminal and put you on the sleeper. You can't get out too fast +for me." + +"It's kind of you to kick a fellow when he's down," said Lawson +sardonically. + +"It's a pretty expensive kick," returned Leverich grimly, "but it's the +last. You'll never get a cent more from me, nor from Myra either, if I +know it." + +"Oh, very well," said Lawson indifferently. But when his sister came in +afterwards alone, he cut her words short; through all her plaintive +farewell complainings there was a manifestly cheerful prevision of +relief when he should be gone. + +"I've had enough of this--don't come in here again. He says you're to +send me no money, but you're to send me all I want--you hear?" + +"Oh, Lawson!" + +"You know why you'd better." He fixed his eye on her threateningly, and +the full color blanched suddenly from her face. + +"Yes, yes, I will." She made an effort to recover herself. "If you +realized how used up I am over all this----" + +"Don't come in here again!" His rising voice, the glance he shot at her, +sent her flying from the room--it was as if some crouching animal were +about to leap a barrier between them. + +The shifting gray clouds were darkening now into a solid mass, the eerie +wind that had sprung up whined fitfully around the corners of the house, +as he sat there waiting. After a while the door opened and shut; there +was a soft, rustling noise. Lawson looked up, and saw Dosia against that +background of the darkening sky. She was in a white silken gown, given +her by Mrs. Leverich, that fell in straight folds from her waist to her +feet. She had been in white the night of the ball. But her face! He put +his hand involuntarily across his eyes. So pinched, so wan, so small, so +piteously changed that face, he did well to hide the sight of it from +him. Only her eyes--those eyes that were the mirrors of Dosia's +soul--showed that she still lived; in them was a steadfastness and a +purpose won from death. + +She came straight toward him, though with a slow and languid step, +dragging a low chair forward to a place by his. His rough appearance, so +different from his usual carelessly well-cared-for aspect, sent a +momentary spasm over her pinched face, but that was all. She dropped +into the chair as one who found it difficult to stand, saying after a +moment's silence, in a childlike voice: + +"Please take your hand down from your eyes; please don't mind looking at +me." + +He dropped the hand heavily on the table, with some inarticulate +protest. + +"Please don't mind looking at me. I want to say--I came here to say--it +is all wrong to act as if everything were all your fault, as if you were +all to blame. I've been thinking, thinking, thinking, all day long. If I +had done what was right, none of this would have happened. It was my +fault too." + +"No!" said Lawson roughly. + +"Yes." She stopped, and repeated solemnly: "It was my fault too. They +are sending you away now because--because you had been making love to +me. But I let you"--her locked fingers twisted and untwisted as she +talked--"I _wanted_ you to, when I knew it was wrong, when I didn't +really love you. That was why you couldn't respect me. If I had been +quite high and good, you would not have--none of this would have +happened." + +"Oh!" said Lawson; the old bitter, mocking smile flickered back to his +lips. "Really, don't you think you're setting too much value even on +_your_ influence? I assure you, you can have quite a clear conscience in +that regard." + +She went on, with no attention to what he had been saying beyond the +fact that her pale cheek seemed to whiten and her gaze was fixed the +more solemnly on his. + +"I couldn't be satisfied until I had thought out the truth. There is +nothing that satisfies but the truth." Her voice sank to a whisper. "If +it cuts your heart in two, you've got to bear it--and be glad--because +it's the truth. I know now that, after all, I didn't help you; I +_hindered_. That's all the more reason for me to stand by you now. And I +came to say,"--she took his hand and laid her cold cheek upon it,--"if +you go away--take me with you! I have enough money to go too. If you +have to work, I'll work; if you are hungry, I'll be hungry. There is no +one to love you but me, and I _will_. I said I would believe in you, and +I will believe in you--as I promised--always." + +"My God!" said Lawson. He tore his hand from her, and flung his head +upon his folded arms on the table, breaking into great, voiceless sobs +that shook him from head to foot. Half-inarticulate words fell from him: +"Don't touch me--don't come near me!" At last he turned, and, gathering +up a fold of her gown, kissed it again and again. His passion raised a +faint stir of the old thrill that came from she knew not where, except +that his presence inevitably called it forth. + +"For this once you may believe in me," he said. "Look at me!" His gaze, +burning with an inner scorn, rested on hers. "You are the dearest, the +loveliest--" His voice broke once more, he had to wait before he could +regain it. "If I were to let you sink your life with mine, I'd deserve +to be hung. I've let you talk as if you could help me. Well, you can't, +and I'll tell you why--I'll clear your conscience of me forever. Down at +the bottom of it all, I don't want to be helped. I don't want to be made +better. I don't want to live a different life! There are moments when +I've deceived myself as well as you, but it was all rot. It's not that +I'm not fit for you,--no man's that!--but I'm made so that I'd rather go +to the devil than _be_ fit for you. The more you cared for me, the more +I'd drag you down. That's the whole brutal truth. The one saving grace I +own is that I tell it to you now." + +"Ah, no, no!" said Dosia, with a cry. "It can't be so." She turned her +head from side to side, as one looking for succor; her composure was +failing her, after so many cruel knife-thrusts in her already bleeding +heart--she yearned over him with a compassion and longing too great to +bear. + +"Dosia," said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice sounded far away in +her ears. + +"Yes," she answered, rising also, she knew not why. + +"This is good-by." + +She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed to lose the marks +of dissipation and bitterness, and become strangely boyish, strangely +sweet, in its expression. + +"See!" he said, "I could clasp my arms around you, as I'm longing to, +and kiss your darling mouth. You'd let me, wouldn't you, blessed one? +For all that I've done or all that I've been, you'd let me?" + +"Yes," whispered Dosia, trembling. + +"Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, that I did +not--that I was man enough to keep you free of me at the last. I'll +never touch you again--no, not so much as the hem of your gown. And, so +help me God, I'll never look upon your face again." + +"Lawson, Lawson!" + +"I'll never see your face again. When you think of me, believe and pray +that I'll keep my word. I want to have the thought of you to die with." + +"I can't bear it!" wailed Dosia suddenly. + +"Good-by." + +She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, and his +gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking at each other; the room +faded away from before them in those moments that were of eternity. The +past--the present--the future crept up now and stood between them, +pushing them farther and farther away from each other, farther and +farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and +grown dim. They were neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, +and beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting. + +Through the high window the darkening sky had become suddenly luminous +where it touched the horizon. + +Slowly she moved away from him--slowly, slowly. One last lingering, +solemn look, and the door had closed. + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + + +"Lois, would you mind very much if we didn't move into the new house, +after all?" + +"Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be +finished next week." + +"It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this +year," said Justin. + +Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the purple +wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after Dosia's +return. At the side of the steps a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the +place fragrant; the air was full of a sort of glitter that touched the +leaves whenever they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made +the grass brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the voices of the +children sounded peacefully over their early supper. + +The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no +foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George +Sutton, and the people who might "drop in," as they often did on +Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, +had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while waiting +for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but now that he was +here she put down her book with a show of reluctance as she said: + +"Why didn't you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades +yesterday when I was in town--that was what I wanted to talk to you +about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks +beforehand at this season of the year." + +"You can countermand it, can't you?" + +"I suppose I'll have to--if we're not to move into the house," said Lois +in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as usual, to +her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled. "I thought +you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the money _all_ +have to 'go back into the business,'" she quoted sardonically, "as +usual? I think there might be some left for your own family sometimes. +I'm tired of always going without for the business." It was a complaint +she had made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment +she felt as if she were saying it for the first time. + +"We have orders, I'm glad to say, but we've had one big setback lately," +he answered. + +He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side--the very +effort for success was meat and drink to him, he cared not what else he +went without, so the business grew; but she _might_ have had a little +more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the grand +climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife +sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right. + +"I've been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven't talked +about it," he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The +blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope +with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it--the +whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not +diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see +his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the unreasoning +sympathy of love. + +"I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I +shouldn't have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple of +houses for next year that you'll like much better, he says." + +"Oh, it will be just the same next year; there'll always be something," +said Lois indifferently, getting up to go into the house. "I hate the +whole thing!" + +He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have +counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that he +could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If his +own wife could be like that, she might be. + +"Papa dear, I love you so much!" + +He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and +blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes, +her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent +over. + +"Zaidee, my little Zaidee," he said, and, lifting her on his knee, +strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection +that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart +perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, +and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure--his little +darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his child, +he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it was, +could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the heart-hunger of +his wife. + +She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the +house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the +atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and +unsmiling, accepting Justin's occasional caresses as if they made little +difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, +passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; it +contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still +occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and +everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall must +be adjusted to her ear--that ear that had strained and ached for his +coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in which +he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him until he +kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at being so +glad to go. + +The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had +feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all +his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had borrowed +a large sum from Lewiston's,--a young private banking firm, glad at the +moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of months,--holding +on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new demand for the +machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater's, with whom there was +still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed +at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich's dictum regarding +Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, +outlying competitors: "You'll have to force that fellow out of business +or get him to come into the combine." + +Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price +demanded for the continuance of a backing; there was just a little of +the high-handed quality in his manner which says, "No more nonsense, if +you please." That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs that +were ready, if he showed symptoms of "falling down," to shake him +ratlike by the neck and cast him out. + +"Papa dear, papa dear! There's a man coming up the walk, my papa dear." + +"Why, so there is," said Justin, rising and setting the child down +gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois +simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. "Why, how are you, +Larue? I'm mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?" + +"The steamer got in day before yesterday," said the newcomer, shaking +hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark, pointed +beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice +that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered over Lois. +"How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? Which chair shall I push +out of the sun for you--this one?" + +"Yes, thank you," responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of +lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green +vines. "Aren't you going to sit down yourself?" + +"Thank you, I've only a minute," said the visitor, leaning against one +of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. "I'm out at my place at +Collingswood for the summer, and the trains don't connect very well on +Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I +wouldn't pass you by." + +"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Lois. + +"Very pleasant," rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. "Oh, by the +way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office +last week. Anything I can do for you?" + +"Have you any money lying around just now that you don't know what to do +with?" asked Justin significantly. + +Mr. Larue's dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the +mention of money brings into social relations. + +"Perhaps," he admitted. + +"May I come around to-morrow at three o'clock and talk to you?" + +"Yes, do," said the other, preparing to move on. "Please don't get up, +Mrs. Alexander; you don't look as well as I'd like to see you." + +"Oh, I'm all right," said Lois. + +"You must try and get strong this summer," said Mr. Larue, his eyes +dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he +turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee +dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue turned +once more and lifted his hat to her. + +A faint, lovely color had come into Lois' cheek, brought there by the +powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larue's presence; she +felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had hardly +talked alone for a couple of hours altogether in their whole five years' +acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest +occasion, as he had to-day; he knew when she entered a room or left it, +and she knew that he knew. + +It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which +exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of +either. He knew as soon as his eyes fell on her whether she were glad or +sorry, lonely or confident, and his glance or the tone of his voice was +a response to her mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or +too cold, or needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such +intuitions; he had to be told clumsily, and even then might not +understand. Yet she had not loved him the less because she must beat +down such little barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more +for it--he was the man to whom she belonged heart and soul--but the +barriers were a fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do +nothing that Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she +misunderstood her involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he +reverenced her as his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He +would have given all he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin +took as a matter of course. + +Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than half +of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived abroad for +the further study of music, an art to which she was passionately +devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of scandal into +the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away; there was +nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden, under the +undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant publicity +of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She sometimes played the +accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went over every spring, +presumably to be with her, living alone for the greater part of the year +at his large place at Collingswood. Neither was ever known to speak of +the other without the greatest respect, and questions as to when either +had been "heard from" were usual and in order; it was always tacitly +taken for granted that Mrs. Larue's expatriation was but temporary. + +But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had +suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the +tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to +that sting of the known comment of other men: "It must be pretty tough +to have your wife go back on you like that." In some mysterious way his +wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished on +her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married him, +it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had proudly let +her go. + +Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch +steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said: + +"There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia's hurrying down the road. I +think I'd better take the chairs in now." + + + + +CHAPTER SIXTEEN + + +Dosia had come back from the Leverichs' to a household in which her +presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. +She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, and spent her +evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for +sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough--sleep, where all +one's sensibilities were dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She +had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before, +owing to their mother's preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a +drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich +domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest. +Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of +all--as if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting +for the next thing to happen. + +Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held +back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She +couldn't understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get +into an equivocal position with such a man--"really not a gentleman," as +she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that +you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was +condemning. + +The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously +questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich +bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor +was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was +absorbed. + +Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory +counting on the sympathy that had helped her before, but she had been +unfortunate in the times for her visits; on the first occasion Mrs. +Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the +second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird +pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable +house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to +put out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing +when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every +minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, "People +ought to know when to come and when not to." Dosia got no farther than +the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her +a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she +was not asked to sit down. + +Your trouble wasn't anybody else's trouble, no matter how kind people +were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her devoted +cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and giving her a +curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. It +would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could have hurt her very +much. But Dosia was in the half-numb condition which may result from +some great blow or the fall from a great height, save for those moments +when she was anguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest +dagger-thrusts, at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, as when +one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful dead which one must, +for all time, be terribly powerless to alleviate. + +Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her +great bunches of roses that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly akin +when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every week, +though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was +changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest and +solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other claims Mr. +Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of profit for +himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He required little +entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected faculty for +narrative conversation. + +Foolish and inane in amatory "attentions" to young ladies, George was no +fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of current +facts, and could talk about the newsboys' clubs, or the condition of the +docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical reasons +why motives for reform didn't reform; and the talk was usually +semi-interesting, and sometimes more--he had the personal intimacy with +his topics which gives them life. Dosia began to find him, if not +exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed. She began genuinely to +like him; he took her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always +thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments when +his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration or a warmer feeling, +but was, instead, somewhat gratefully touched by it. Not only her +starved vanity but her starved self-respect cried out for food, and he +alone gave it to her. + +This Sunday afternoon Dosia--modish and natty in her short walking-skirt +and little jacket of shepherd's check, and a clumpy, black-velveted, +pink-rosed straw hat--walked companionably beside the square-set figure +of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had +preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a strong breeze, +although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside trees and grasses +had inspired him with the recollection of a country boy's calendar--a +pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his +theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or to hold her +little checked umbrella so that the sun should not shine in her eyes, or +to offer her his hand with old-fashioned gallantry if there was any hint +of an obstacle to surmount. The way was long, yet not too long. They +stopped, however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while +leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side of the slope +below the carriage drive, looking down into the green meadows below; +beyond, afar off, there was the white mist-hazed glimpse of a river with +toy houses crowded thickly into the middle distance. + +As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia +with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Sutton's voice suddenly +broke the silence: + +"I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday." + +Dosia's heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that +anybody had spoken his name since he left. She had prayed for him every +night--how she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any other reach +than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in it--fear of +any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting tone of the person +who told it, which she would be powerless to resent; fear of awakening +in herself the echo of that struggle of the past. + +"He's at the mines, isn't he?" she questioned, in that tone which she +had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him. + +"Yes; but I don't believe he's working there yet. He seems to be mostly +engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds like him, +doesn't it?" + +"Yes," assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance. + +"I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there," pursued Mr. Sutton. +"It's the worst kind of a life for him. He's an awfully clever fellow; +he could do anything, if he wanted to. I don't know any man I admire +more, in certain ways, than I do Barr." + +Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson's clever brilliancy, his +social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself +had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond. +"I've known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he +came to this place," he continued. + +"Oh, did you?" cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some +words of Mrs. Leverich's returned to her--"Mr. Sutton brought Lawson +home last night." So that was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she +went on: "It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr. Barr. +Everybody here seems to look down on--to despise him." + +"Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick," said George, with an unexpected +crude energy; his good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous +expression. "Men talking about him who themselves----" He looked down +sidewise at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more +respectable than he,--respectability might be said to be his cult,--yet +he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein +"ladies" were a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of +confidence by the fact of George Sutton's presence. His feeling for Barr +and toleration of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that +George himself had also been brought up in one of those small, dull +country towns in which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing +houses have no home in them for a boy and his friends. + +"If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all +right," he asserted shortly. "Perhaps we'd better be going home; it +looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of +difference in this world, Miss Dosia." + +"I suppose it does; I've never had it," said Dosia simply. + +"Maybe you'll have it some day," returned Mr. Sutton significantly. His +pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road +together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawson's name had +created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm +throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; _he_ prized +her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show it. He +went on now with genuine emotion: "I know one thing; if--if I had a +wife, she'd never have to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss +Dosia." + +"She ought to care a good deal for you, then," suggested Dosia, picking +her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little black ties +finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Sutton's hand ever on +the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow. + +"No, I wouldn't ask that; I'd only ask her to let me care for _her_. I +think most men expect too much from their wives," said George. "I don't +think they've got the right to ask it. And I don't think a man has any +right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have--that's +my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did +me the honor of accepting my hand,"--Mr. Sutton's voice faltered with +honest emotion,--"I'd spend my life trying to make her happy, I would +indeed, Miss Dosia. I'd take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my +means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her." + +"I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known," said Dosia, +with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off, +outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book. +Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she +had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first, +and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted +with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true +and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his +uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love--in short, +"John," the honest, patient, constant "John" of fiction. His affection +for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim +her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him, +which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really "John"--Dosia +half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman. + +The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile +overspread her face. + +"Here's the very lady for you now," she remarked flippantly, as Ada +Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark +cloud in the background, on her way to a friend's house from service at +the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada's cheeks took on a not +unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton's +glance,--a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,--before she went +down the side-road. + +Mr. Sutton's face reddened also. "Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be very +charming, but I wouldn't marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl left +in the world. I give you my word I wouldn't. _You_ ought to know----" + +"We'll have to hurry, or we'll be caught in the rain," interrupted +Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an +affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the house +and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and +Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached the +piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois greeted +Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded the +accustomed dead level. + +"Do come in, you'll be caught in the rain if you go on. Can't you stay +to a Sunday night's tea with us?" + +"Oh, do," urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze. +Lois' hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance +lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She +felt a new tie with Mr. Sutton--they both sympathized with Lawson, +believed in him! + +She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little +round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverich's, which +somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look like a +cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of +the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red +lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort as she +cuddled within Dosia's half-bare round white arm, while Mr. Sutton, +drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody +else, his round face getting brick-red at times with suppressed emotion, +though he tried to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory +conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin +alternately played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in the +intervals of discourse. + +Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to +darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming storm; +the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down again; the +trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and +white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently from where Dosia +sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side of the street--a +tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy, erect carriage of a +soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite the house, looked over +at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to stop +the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he crossed over with +a quick, decided step. + +"Why, here's Girard!" cried Justin, rising with alacrity. His voice came +back from the hall. "Awfully glad you took us on your way. Leverich told +you where I lived? You'll have to stay now until the storm is over. +Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia----" + +"I have already met Mr. Girard," said Dosia, turning very white, but +speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the +half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he +bowed with politely murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half +across the room, he seated himself by Justin. + +A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt +before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a +sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met +hers--resentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and +lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head +high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched--though he turned +from her a moment to say: + +"Weren't you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard?" + +"Yes; I thought you didn't see me," said the other lightly, himself +turning to respond to a question of Justin's, which left the other group +out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed himself +with ardor. + +[Illustration: _Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else_] + +There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through +large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there talking +to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin +leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no +one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging personality, +seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, by the side of +Girard. + +Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the +dining-room,--with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following +after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him +away,--came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if +he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As +a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he +much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in +women's society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of +shyness, of deficiency--perhaps partly caused by the conscious +disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born, but +it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to be credited, +and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like many +very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of attractiveness +himself. + +It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation, +with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light +over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and the +water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond +was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the round +mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled +lilies-of-the-valley in the center. + +The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an +odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this +commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed +to be only a veil for the things of the spirit--subtle +cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions +tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one +knew not what. To Dosia's swift observation, Girard had lost some of the +brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the ball; he +looked as if he had been under some harassing strain. Her first +impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was reinforced +now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then, +had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, the +hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the shrine of her +memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger. Had he known? He +must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the +most! She could not hear what he said though the room was small; he and +Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was evident that he frankly +admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became +curiously aware that from his position directly across the room he was +covertly watching her as she sat consentingly listening to George +Sutton, whose round face was bending over very near, his thick coat +sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles of hers as it rested on the carved +arm of the little sofa. + +She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its big +blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the simple +rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held. + +Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia's bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved +a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant +moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of +vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her +imagining--she felt the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those +two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously +so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to +Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was, indeed, in that +stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any concealment, and for +which other men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even while +she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish manifestation of +something inherently great, and a tribute to her power. To Dosia's +indifference, in this strange dual sense of another and resented +excitement,--an excitement like that produced on the brain by some +intolerably high altitude,--Mr. Sutton's attentions seemed to breathe +only of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very kind. +She could ask him to do anything for her, and he would do it, no matter +what it was, just because she asked him. He was planning now a day on +somebody's yacht, with Lois, of course; and "What do you say, Miss +Dosia--can't we make it a family party, and take the children too?" he +asked, with eager divination of what would please this lovely thing. + +"Yes, oh, why can't you take _us_?" cried Zaidee, trembling with +delight. + +The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole place +was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosia's voice was +heard saying: + +"I'll get my photograph now, if you want it." She rose and left the +room,--she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,--and Zaidee ran +over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain +against Dosia rosy warm. + +"You had better light the lamp, Justin," said Lois, and then, "Oh, +you're not going?" as Girard stood up. + +He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. "I'm afraid I'll have to." + +"I expected you to stay to tea; I've had a place set for you." + +"I'd like to very much--it's kind of you to ask me--but I'm afraid not +to-night. I'll see you to-morrow, Sutton, I suppose. Good evening, Mrs. +Alexander." His hand-touch seemed to give an intimacy to the words. + +"Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere," said Justin, +investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who had followed the +two, stood in the doorway. + +"I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by?" asked Girard +tentatively. + +"Will you, Zaidee?" asked her father, in his turn. + +For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. Girard dropped +on one knee, a very gallant figure of a gentleman, as he put both arms +around the small, light form of the child and held her tightly to him +for one brief instant while his lips pressed that warm cheek. When he +strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in farewell, it was with +an odd, somber effect of having said good-by to a great deal. + +For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had been the +recipient of an emotion called forth by some one else. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVENTEEN + + +"Lois?" + +"Yes?" + +Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary +overhead singing with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her look +gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was busy, as +ever, with--no matter what she was doing--the self-fullness of her +thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to move +into the other house, where, amid new surroundings, she could escape +from the familiar walls and outlook that each brought its suggestion of +pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how she wanted to +be happy. + +Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said: + +"I've something to tell you, Lois." + +"Well?" + +"I'm engaged to George Sutton." + +"Dosia!" + +Lois' work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl. + +"I'm sure I don't see that you need be surprised," said Dosia. She +looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either +sympathy or interest. + +"No, I suppose not," said Lois. "Of course, I know he has been paying +you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls almost +as much." She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a sense, she had +rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve many +difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia--if Dosia could----! +Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without loving him would +have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a physical +impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or support was +outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with cold +disapproval: + +"Dosia, you don't know what you are doing. You don't love George +Sutton." + +Dosia's face took on the well-known obstinate expression. + +"He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is +satisfied, I don't see why anyone else need object! He likes me just as +I am, whether I care for him or not." + +She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that +unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly +subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though +her voice was tremulous. "And I _do_ care for him. I like him better +than anyone I know; we are sympathetic on a great many points. No +one--_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesn't want anything but +to make me happy." + +Lois made a gesture of despair. "Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George +Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is +going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what +girls imagine, Dosia." + +"I suppose so," said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to +Lois. "Would you like to see my ring?" She turned the circle around on +her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. "He gave it to me +last night." + +"It is very handsome," said Lois. "I suppose you will have to be +thinking of clothes soon," she added, with a glimmer of the natural +feminine interest in all that pertains to a wedding, since further +protest seemed futile. "I will write to Aunt Theodosia." + +"Thank you," said Dosia dutifully. + +A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably +beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches, and +strawberries as large as the peaches, and the contents of a box of +flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as +Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge--the former +winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees +nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, jumping on her back whenever +she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered +herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! Nothing could be +sweeter than these. + +In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, she put on +her hat with the roses and went to make a call, long deferred and +hitherto impossible of accomplishment, on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a bride +of a few months, who, as Alice Torrington, had been one of the girls of +her outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but she +felt that Alice Wayne's state of mind would be more sympathetic, even if +unconsciously so, than Lois'. + +As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful +affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when he +had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him +an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on the +words: + +"I have never known anyone with such a beautiful nature as yours, Miss +Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you happy." + +He did not himself care for motoring--being, truth to tell, afraid of +it--but she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her +father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter come +up to stay with her after she was married--do anything for them that she +would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the shops in +town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and balls, and dressing them +in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the +time to come! She thought with a little awe that she hadn't known that +Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And the way he had spoken +of Lawson--Ah, Lawson! That name tugged at her heart; this suddenly +became one of those anguished moments when she yearned over him as over +a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only through her efforts. +She must never forget! "Lawson, I believe in you." She stopped in the +shaded, quiet street with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the +words aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before +coming back to the eager surface planning of her own life, with an +intermediate throb of a new and deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so +upliftingly faced truth had only strength enough left now to evade it. +Perhaps some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had been +jarred confusingly out of touch. + +[Illustration: _Flowers and children, children and flowers_] + +Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just +returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from +above: + +"Dosia Linden! Won't you come up-stairs? You don't mind, do you?" + +"No, indeed," answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and +pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than +she had expected--an informal reception and talk! With Dosia's own +responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to +see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white negligee, might be +pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau. + +"I hope you won't mind the appearance of this room," she announced, +after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. "I went to town so early +this morning that I didn't have time to really set things to rights, and +I don't like the new maid to touch them." + +"You have so many pretty things," said Dosia admiringly. + +"Yes, haven't I? Take that seat by the window, it's cooler. Please don't +look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, +though he has his own chiffonier in the other room--he's such a _bad_ +boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his things for +him." + +Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly +responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not at +all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a great +deal of "style," but she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm +of attraction because she was so happy. + +"Have this fan, won't you?" She went on talking: "Harry and I saw you +and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had +stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the +loveliest thing! What a pity he won't go where there are girls! Harry is +quite jealous, though I tell him he needn't be." Mrs. Wayne paused with +a lovely flush before going on. "You didn't see us, though we stopped +quite near you. My dear, it's _very_ evident that--" She paused once +more, this time with arch significance. "Oh, you needn't be afraid, I +never know anything until I'm told. But George is such a good fellow! +I'm sure I ought to know--he was perfectly devoted to me. He's not the +kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,--girls are so foolish +and romantic,--but he'd be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says he's a +lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much happier +married--the right people, of course." + +"Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?" asked Dosia, as she +lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had +had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, +melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, instead, +one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her finger, +underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes roved +warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and +her husband, folding up her Harry's neckties as she chattered, her +fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She brought out +some of her pretty dresses afterwards for Dosia's inspection. From the +open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes was distinctly +visible--Harry's shoes, which the wife laughingly put back into place as +she went and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even +those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched with sentiment +for her because the feet of her dearest had worn them. + +In Dosia's world so far it was a matter of course that some people were +married--their household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation +to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to +these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne +had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of +living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an +absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of +her indifference; the room choked her. George Button's neckties, not to +speak of his shoes----! + +"I'll have to be going," she interrupted precipitately, rising as she +spoke. + +"Why,"--Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at her +in surprise,--"what's the matter? Aren't you well?" + +"Yes, yes, but I have an appointment," affirmed Dosia desperately. "I've +been enjoying it all so much, but I'd forgotten I must go--at once! +Good-by." + +She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, but it was +imperative that she should be alone, away from all suggestion of the +newly married. She hoped that there would be no visitors, but as she +neared the house she saw that there was some one on the piazza--George +Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose above his white +waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled the rose in color as he came +to meet her. + +"Why, I thought you were not coming until this evening," said Dosia +demandingly,--"not until you could see Justin." + +"Did you think I could stay away as long as that?" asked George. His +manner the night before had been almost reverential in the depth of his +honest emotion; the kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had seemed of +an impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed it. She was +conscious now of a change. + +"Where is Lois?" she asked, as they went up the steps together. + +"The maid said she had stepped out for a moment." + +"Then we'll sit here on the piazza and wait for her," said Dosia, +without looking at her lover. Taking the hat-pins out of her hat, she +deposited it on a chair with a quick decision of movement, and then +seated herself by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking +disappointed, was left perforce to the rocker on the other side. + +The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a rambling vine, open +toward the street; but around the corner of the house Japanese screens +walled it off from passers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet with big +bowls of roses. + +"Come around to the other end of the porch," said George appealingly. + +"No," said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; "I like it here." + +She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread out her hands, +palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, which had been turned inward, +caught the sunshine gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled. +Dosia saw the smile and reddened. + +"I wish you wouldn't sit there looking at me," she said in a tone which +she tried to make neutral. + +"Come down to the other end of the piazza--just for a moment." + +"No!" said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement and changed her tone +sharply: "Oh, there's a spider on the table there, crawling toward me! +Please take it away." Her voice rose uncontrollably. "I hate spiders-- +oh, I _hate_ spiders! I'm afraid of them. Make it go away! please! +There--now you've got it; throw it off the piazza, quick! Don't bring it +near me!" + +"The little spider won't hurt you," said George enjoyingly. + +Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her +deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red +lips quivering, was distractingly lovely; fear gave to her quick, +uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of +his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the +innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb and +forefinger, a little nearer to her--a little nearer yet. There is a type +of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is +an exquisitely funny joke. + +"Don't," said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready to fly from the +chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with George's fatuously smiling +face behind it. The next instant she had fled wildly down to the +screened corner of the veranda, with George after her, only to be +stopped by the screens at the end. His following arms closed tightly +around her as he kissed her in happy triumph. + +After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia stood perfectly +still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession that came into +play at such times. She seemed to yield entirely now to the rightful +caresses of an accepted lover as she said in a perfectly even and casual +tone of voice: + +"Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my handkerchief from +up-stairs. I'll be right back again." + +"Don't be gone long," said George fondly, releasing her +half-unconsciously at the accent of custom. + +"No," said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him coquettishly as she +went off with unhurried step--to dart up two pairs of stairs like a +flying, hunted thing, and into her room, to lock the door fast and bolt +it as if from the thoughts that pursued her. + +Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled the door-knob +ineffectually before she knocked. + +"Dosia, what's the matter? To whom are you talking? Let me in! Katy +said, when she came up, you would not answer--she said Mr. Sutton had +been walking up and down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in; +let me in this minute!" + +The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and the door flew +open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her hair in wild disorder, was +standing in the center of the room, fiercely rubbing her already scarlet +cheeks with a rough towel. Every trace of assumed listlessness had +vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant eyes, and +talking half-disconnectedly. + +"Never let him come here again--never, never!" she appealed to Lois. + +[Illustration: _"Never let him come here again--never, never!_"] + +"Whom do you mean?" + +"George Sutton!" + +A contraction passed over her face; she began rubbing again with renewed +fury. + +"Don't do that, Dosia! You'll take the skin off. Stop it!" + +Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel +away from her. "Dosia, sit down by me here on the bed--how you're +trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not, you'll take +the skin off your face." + +"I want to take it off," whispered Dosia intensely. "I hate him, I hate +him! I never want to see him again. I can't see him again! I threw the +ring out in the hall somewhere. You'll have to find it---- I couldn't +have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can't see him +again; promise me that I'll never see him again--promise, _promise_!" +She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that protection. + +"Yes, yes, dear, I promise," said Lois with a sudden warmth of sympathy +such as she had never before felt for the girl. This situation, this +feeling, she could comprehend--it might have been her own in similar +case. She had known girls before who had been engaged for but a day or a +week, and then revolted; it was not so new a circumstance as the world +fancies. + +She drew the towel now from Dosia's relaxed fingers, and held her closer +as she said: + +"There, be quiet, Dosia, and don't make yourself ill. I don't see what +that poor man is going to do--of course he'll feel dreadfully; but you +can't help that now--it's a great deal better than finding out the +mistake later. I'll tell him not to come again, I promise you. Of +course, I'll have to speak to Justin; I don't know what he will say!" +Lois broke into a rueful smile. "Dosia, Dosia! What scrape will you get +into next?" + +"Isn't it dreadful!" gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked +at Lois with tragic eyes. + +"Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I +can never be nice again--no one can ever think I'm nice again! No one +can ever--_love_ me in this world!" She buried her hot face in Lois' +bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the +other's incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently a +woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the +loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly: + +"It seems so strange--things begin--and you think they are going to turn +out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden they +end--and there is nothing more. Everything is all beginning--and then it +ends--there is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again!" + +"Nonsense! You'll feel very differently about it all after a while," +said Lois sensibly. + +"I don't want to go down-stairs again." Dosia began to shake violently. +"If he were to come back----" + +"Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner," said Lois +humoringly. "I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, you'll have to +promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment +I'm out of the room." + +"No, I'll be good," murmured Dosia submissively. "Oh, Lois, you're so +kind to me! I love you so much!" + +Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not +eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to the door by the maid, brought in +to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that first +night of her arrival--oh, so long ago!--after tempest and disaster. Yet +then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone down through +everything, and now there was no future, only a murky past, and she a +poor girl who had dropped so far out of the way of happiness that she +could never get back to it, never be nice again. That hand that had once +held hers so firmly, so steadily, that she could sleep secure with just +the comfort of its remembered touch--the thought of it had become only +pain, like everything else. Oh, back of all this shaming hurt with +Lawson and George Sutton was another shame, that went deeper and deeper +still. Since that visit of Bailey Girard's, she had known that he had +thought of her as she had thought of him, with a knowledge that could +not be controverted. It is astonishing that we, who feel ourselves to be +so dependent on speech as a means of communication, have our intensest, +our most revealing moments without it. He had thought of her as she had +of him, and, with the thought of her in his heart, had been content +easily that it should be no more. + +Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her dreams,--lover, +protector, dearest friend,--to have sought her mightily with the +privilege and the prerogative of a man, so that she might have had no +experience to live through but that white experience with him! + +"Dosia! Open the door quickly." + +It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She +stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held +out a telegram--for the second time the transmitter of bad news from the +South. The message read: "Your father is ill. Come at once." + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + + +There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings, +followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition +from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months fly +by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone, there +is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too much stress +on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the current of our +lives, and do not take into account that drama which never ceases to be +acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which takes place within +ourselves. + +It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after +extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but +temporary--a condition to be ended next week or the week after at +farthest. Her father's illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking +every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter; and after +his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while, with only +Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, +looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness +and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn +money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to some of the +temporary tribe at the hotel--an existence in which self was submerged +in loving care for those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was +always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and too much +of a luxury to have any of its precious moments wasted in wakeful +dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about any more. But when +she crept into her low bed she turned away from the moonlight, because +there are times, when one is young, when moonlight is very hard to bear. + +The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of its +resources, when Mrs. Linden's brother in San Francisco offered her and +her children a home with him--an offer which, naturally, did not include +Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she had worked +so hard for them, they were not to belong to her for her very own. The +aunt whose generosity had given her the money for her musical education +had also died, leaving a small sum in trust for the girl; it was that +which furnished her with means when she went once more to stay at the +Alexanders'. Justin himself had written to see if she could come. + +There was another baby now, a couple of months old, and Lois needed her. +No fairy-story maiden this, going out to seek her fortune, who took an +uneventful train journey this time--only a very tired girl, worn with +work and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to lean her head +against the back of the car-seat and feel the burden of anxiety and care +slip from her for a little while. + +Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for those whom we love +may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin, the blue veins on +her temples showed more plainly, her face was no longer the typical +white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and +inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had tasted +of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known suffering, +she had faced shame and disappointment and--truth; yes, through +everything she had faced that--taken herself to account, probed, +condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained +in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from +a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she +might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into +being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet--the soul of that Dosia +who was made to be loved. + +If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago, so +had the conditions changed in the household to which she went. Justin +had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has achieved +what he has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the +silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously drops +through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business, +quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big +enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had +been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been +hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small +rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring town--both glad, +in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful arbiter. +Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in request by +fifty people now, for many things--for many more, indeed, than had been +thought of at first; every week plans in special adjustments were made +to fit the machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not only a +success in itself, but was destined to fit into more and more of the +needs of the working world as a standard product. + +Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over +to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted to +see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and +successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of all +this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits had +always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in +constant and growing need of money. + +Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increased--prices of +copper and steel, of machinery, of wages, in addition to the larger +number of hands employed, and the rent of the additional floor. It was +always necessary for one's peace of mind to go back to the value of the +material stock and the assets to be counted on in the future. The steady +branching out of the business in every direction was proof of the fact +that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, +fewer opportunities--financial suicide. + +It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be +seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened. +If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the +doors must open farther. No matter how one tries to see all around the +consequences of any change, any undertaking, there always arise minor +consequences which from their very nature must be unforeseen, and yet +which may turn out to be the really powerful factors in the main issue; +unimportant genii that, let out of their bottles, swell immeasurably. +The consequences of the fire, small as it was, seemed never-ending. The +defective bars had proved a disastrous supply for the machine, in more +ways than one. + +Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his own retrieval, he +had borrowed the ten thousand from Lewiston, and had used part of the +money to pay the interest to the others; and later, in the flush of +reinstatement, he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, a +loan to be called by him at any time. Lewiston's loan had seemed easy of +repayment at six months, Justin knew when the money was coming in, but +he had been obliged, after all, to anticipate, and get his bills +discounted before they came due for other purposes, often paying huge +tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed the note for sixty days, +and then for sixty more, but with the proviso that this was the last +extension. + +In short, the whole process of competently keeping afloat had been gone +through, with a definite aim of accomplishment; Cater's cooperation, +about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the +business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money +and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. Justin had +approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him +cautiously negative where once he had seemed friendlily suggesting. + +Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power of the man behind +it, which must not only comprehend and direct the larger issues, but +must be able to carry along smoothly all the easily entangling threads +of detail; he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have the +untiring nervous energy that can "hold out" through any crisis. Such men +may go to pieces after incredible effort, but they are on the way to +success first. Danger only quickens the sure leap to safety. + +Justin, preeminently clear-headed, had been conscious lately of two +phases--one an almost preternatural illumination of intellect, and the +other a sort of brain-inertia, more soul- and body-fatiguing than any +pain. There were seasons when he was obliged to think when he could +instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, competent, but +underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation +and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first night +of his agreement with Leverich was as a child's play with toy bricks is +to the building of an edifice of stone. + +The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely with the +daily need of money at home for petty uses; a condition of affairs which +often happens at the birth of a child, when the household is at loose +ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater in every direction at the +time when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed never to +have enough "change" in his pockets, no matter how much he brought home. + +In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing +when there is no other passion to divide them--the nature grows all one +way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always as +dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of affection, +the love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of all +men--that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the cause of +the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone out from +this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift. + +Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when +she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she had +always added the proviso, "if he could afford it," and accepted the fact +either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and more +affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she keenly +felt, less personally loving. + +If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to go +out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on the +lounge; and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner thread +of sympathy was lacking. + +Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the +most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which +she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending as +she cowered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold and +chill for lack of that vital warmth. + +There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him, but +always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that which +seemed as if it could never change began to change. + +Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference. +Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane and +heroic in times of real danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave, +thoughtful for Zaidee and Hedge and Justin even while she trembled, +excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband. + +Then, afterwards, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in at +the end of each day and sat down by his wife's bedside, holding her +blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a sweet, +sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though +the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that +one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had +been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct +calamitous illness to which she looked forward as one might look forward +to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a +manifestation of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that of a +child, to be soothed by reason. + +Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging fear. One cause +for disquieting thought was removed. Now the helplessness of this little +family, for whom he was the provider, tugged at a swelling heart. + +As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than was his wont, +he diverged from his usual custom--instead of entering his own doorway, +he went across the street to Cater's after a moment's hesitation. Now +that Cater's cooperation was at the consummating point, it was wiser not +to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich and Martin were keenly for +its success, Justin's credit would rise immeasurably with it. The +Typometer Company had absorbed the minor machines with so little trouble +that the unabsorbability of the timoscript had seemed an unnecessary +stumbling block. Time and time again Justin had sought Cater with +tabulated figures and unanswerable arguments. The combination, he firmly +believed, would be highly beneficial for both--the field was, in its +way, too narrow to be divided with the highest profit; together they +could command the trade. + +Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,--a word against which +he was principled, with obstinate refusal to differentiate as to kind, +quality, or intent. Like many men who are given to a far-seeing +philosophy in speech, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to +action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring to be +continually reassured about conditions which seemed the very a-b-c of +commerce. The rivalry between the two firms had been apparently +good-natured, yet a little of the sharp edge of competition had shown +signs of cutting through the bond. + +The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript had cut under; +then the typometer had gone as low as was wise, and the timoscript had +begun to weaken in its defenses. + +Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, but rose to +shake hands. There was a look of melancholy in his eyes, in spite of his +smile of greeting. + +"Anything wrong with you?" asked Justin, instinctively noticing the look +rather than the smile. + +"No," said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, and leaned back, +the light from the high unshaded window striking full on his lean yellow +countenance. "No, there's nothing wrong. Got some things off my mind, +things that have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon I don't +feel quite easy without 'em." + +"I think you're very lucky," said Justin. The light from the high window +fell on his face, too--on his brown hair, turning a little gray at the +temples, on the set lines of his face, in which his eyes, keen and blue, +looked intently at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot that was +crossed over his knee was excellently shod. + +Cater shifted a little in his seat. "Well, I don't know. My experience +is some different from the usual run, I reckon; I never had any big +streak of luck that it didn't get back at me afterwards. There was my +marriage--I know it ain't the thing to talk about your marriage, but you +do sometimes. My wife's a fine woman,--yes, sir, I was mighty lucky to +get her,--but I didn't know how to live up to her family. It's been +that-a-way all my life. Sure's I get to ringin' the bells, the floorin' +caves in under me." + +"We'll see that the flooring holds, now that you're coming in with us," +said Justin good-naturedly. "I've got some propositions to put up to you +to-day." + +Cater shook his head. "There's no use of your putting up any +propositions. I've been drawin' on my well of thought so hard lately +that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin' plumb across the street. +I've been cipherin' down to the fact that I can't go it alone, any +more'n you,--there we agree; hold on, now!--but I can't combine." + +"You can't!" cried Justin, with unusual violence. "Why not?" + +"Well, you know my feelin's about trusts, and--I like you, Mr. +Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin'. I +don't believe in it. It'll fail when you count on it most, it'll cramp +on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isn't +so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can't stand Martin havin' +a finger in any concern _I_ have a hold of." + +"He's clever enough to make what he touches pay," said Justin. + +Cater's eyebrows contracted. "You say he's clever because he's +tricky--because he's sharp. He isn't clever enough to make money +honestly, he isn't big enough. You and me, we're honest, or try to be, +but we haven't the brain to give every man his just due, and get ahead, +too. It's the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to play +it! You and me, we can't do it; we ain't got the brain and we ain't got +the nerve; _I_ haven't. You've just ever-lastingly got to do the best +for yourself if you've got a family; the best _as_ you see it." + +"What's all this leading up to? What change have you been making, +Cater?" asked Justin, with stern abruptness. + +"I've given the agency of the machine to Hardanger." + +"Hardanger!" Justin's face flushed momentarily, then became set and +expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then +tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger! + +"I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this change," +continued Cater. "I've been getting the steel fittin's on contract from +Benschoten again, as I did at first; it'll come cheaper in the end. +Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was sorry--I was sorry +to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? I've got to +cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can now." + +"I suppose so." + +"I wanted to tell you the first one," said Cater. + +"Well, I congratulate you," said Justin formally, rising. + +"This isn't going to make any difference in the friendship between me +and you, Mr. Alexander? I've thought a powerful lot of your friendship. +If I'd 'a' seen any way to have come in with you, I'd 'a' done it. But +business ain't going to interfere between two such good friends as we +are!" + +"Why, no," said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal which +still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false. The +handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship seemed to +dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice. + +_Hardanger!_ + +Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors in the trade of +two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by Hardanger & Co. +meant its success--they took nothing that was not likely to succeed; +they _made_ it succeed--for them. Their agents in all parts of the known +world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard to be reached +by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was unassailed; they kept +scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only bar to putting an +article into their hands was the fact that their terms--except in the +case of certain standard articles which they were obliged to +have--embraced nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins +coming to the original owners. Everything had to be figured down, and +still further and further down, by those owners, to make that margin +possible. It was cut-throat all the way through--a policy that made for +the rottenness of trade. + +Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations as to +Hardanger, with the conclusion that there was far more money outside, +even if one must go a little more slowly. It was better to go a little +more slowly, for the sake of getting so much more out of it in the end. +Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything else failed. +Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same way; that was the +understanding between them. But now? Backed by this powerful agency, the +timoscript assumed disquieting proportions. In the distance, a time not +so very far distant either, Justin could see himself squeezed to the +wall, the output of his factory bought up by Hardanger for the price of +old iron--forced into it, whether he would or no. Why had he been so +short-sighted? Why hadn't he made terms himself sooner? But Cater had +been a fool to give in to those terms when, by combining, they could +have swung trade between them to their own measure. Then Hardanger might +have been obliged to seek _them_, to take their price!--Hardanger, who +could afford to laugh at his pretensions now! + +He thought of Cater without malice--with, instead, a shrewd, kind +philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of pity mixed with his wonder. +So that was the way a man was caught stumbling between the meshes, +blinded, dulled, unconsciously maimed of honor, while still feeling +himself erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written agreement +between them that either should consult the other before seeking +Hardanger; but some promises should be all the stronger for not being +written. + +This thing _couldn't_ happen; in some way, he must get his foot inside +the door, so that it couldn't shut on him. There was that note of +Lewiston's, due in thirty days--no, twenty-five now. What about that? + +Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after drayful of +boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the foreman, came into the +office with some estimates, pointing out the figures with a small strip +of steel tubing held absently in his fingers. + +While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign birth +obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than sturdily +independent--the air and the eye of the skilled mechanic. On his own +ground he was master, and Justin, with a smile, deferred to him. But +Justin broke into Bullen's calculations abruptly, after a while, to ask: + +"What's that you've got there? It looks like one of those bars that +nearly smashed us." + +"You've got a good eye, sir," said Bullen approvingly. "A year and a +half ago you'd not have seen any difference between one bit of steel and +another. But there's one thing I didn't see about it myself until +Venly--he's a new man we've taken on--pointed it out to me. He came +across a case of these to-day we'd thrown out in the waste-heap. We +thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a +fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a +minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they weren't from the +Benschoten factory--he was turned off from there last week, they're +cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked +like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the +magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, 'twas right he was! He +says they've got piles of them they've been workin' off on the trade at +a cut price. Venly he said he didn't have any stomach for a skin game +like that." + +"That's a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn't it?" asked Justin. + +"Oh, they're going to sell out in July, so they don't care. I pity +anyone that's counting on any sort of machine that's got these in 'em. +Would you take the glass and look for yourself, sir? Every one of 'em is +flawed!" + + + + +CHAPTER NINETEEN + + +"Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a--" Leverich's words were +not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat +tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not +meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarling--a +wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on +Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute +anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, +chill self-possession. + +"You're sure the agreement's made?" + +"Cater's been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the +past three days; he's loaded up with machines." + +Leverich swore again. "D----d fools, not to have made terms with +Hardanger first! If we'd only known! If there was only some way to put a +spoke in the wheel, even yet!" + +"Oh, I've got the spoke, easily enough," said Justin indifferently, "the +only trouble is, I can't use it." + +"Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn't you say that before?" Leverich came +down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling +ahead on its casters. "What are you sitting here for? What do you mean +by telling me that you can't use it?" + +"Just what I say. But it's not worth talking about." + +"See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his?" + +"I suppose I might." + +"And you're not going to do it?" + +"I can't, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way +that I can't touch it." + +"'The information--' It's something damaging to do with the machine?" + +Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without answering. + +"You have proof?" + +"What's the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, I tell you, I can't +use it. This isn't any funny business, you can see that. Don't you +suppose, if I could use it, that I would? But there are some things a +man can't do--at any rate, _I_ can't. And that settles it." + +Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently enough in the last +few days, since the combination had been unwillingly given into his +hands, but always with the foregone conclusion. The devil--granting that +there is one,--doesn't, as a rule, actively try to tempt us to evil--he +simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our reason. But this +time he had no field for action. To use secret information against +Cater, that could never have been had but for Cater's kindness to him in +helping him to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every +time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for argument to suggest +that this very deed of kindness had worked his disaster--the fact +remained the same. He might do other things, he might do worse +things--this thing he could not do, not though the refusal worked his +own ruin, not though Cater's ruin with Hardanger was insured anyway, but +too late for the typometer to profit by it. Even if the typometer could +by some means keep afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple +of years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a foreign +country. + +Justin had no excess of sentiment, no quixotic impulse urged him to go +and tell Cater what he had learned. It was Cater's business to look +after his end of the game, if the price of material or labor was too +cheap, he must know that there was something wrong with it. The stream +of Justin's mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice +toward himself--nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon +that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now +with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a +situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled +with. + +"How about your obligations? Do you call this fair dealing to us, +Alexander? There's Lewiston's note--once this deal was settled we would +have paid that, as you know. But it's out of the question as things +stand. We'll have to get our money out the best way we can. If this is +your sense of honor--to sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, +let's talk this out. When it comes to talking of ruin, no man can afford +to stand on terms. We didn't put you into the typometer business on any +kindergarten principles--it isn't to form your character. What we did, +we did for profit; and if the profit isn't there, we get out. We've no +objection to doing a kindness for anyone, if we can do it and make a +profit, but it stands to reason that we're not in the business for +philanthropy any more than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we +were willing to give you a place in the game if you could run it to suit +us, but we don't consider any scheme that doesn't make money--what +doesn't make money has to go. Profit, profit, profit--that's what every +sane man puts first, and there's no justice in losing a chance to make +it. What you lose, another man takes--if you make another man's wife and +children better off, you stint your own. You've got to consider a +question on all sides. No woman respects a man who can't make money; +it's his everlasting business to make money, and she knows it. Your wife +won't think much of your fine scruples if she's to go without for +'em--and, by the Lord, she's right! When you go into business, you've +got to make up your mind to one of two things: you've either got to step +hard on the necks of those below you, or you've got to lie down and let +them wipe their feet on you." + +Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. Since none +was offered, he went on, with the large and easy manner of one who feels +the justice of his convictions: "No man ever accused me of being close. +I'm free-handed, if I say it that shouldn't. I like to give, and I _do_ +give. If there's money wanted for charity, the committees know very well +where to come. And my wife likes to give, too; her name's on the books +of twenty charitable organizations. But we give out of money I've made +by _not_ being free-handed--by getting every last cent that belonged to +me. You see, I don't leave my wife out of my calculations--any man's a +fool that does. She's got the right to have as good as I can give her. I +wouldn't talk like this to most men, Alexander, but between you and me +it's different. It pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when you've +got to go home after a hard day's work; you take a dissatisfied woman, +and she'll make your home a hell. I know men--Great Scott! I don't know +how they live!" He paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his +head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side of him. + +"When I say I've made the money," continued Leverich, "I mean that I +actually _have_ made most of it--made it out of nothing! like the first +chapter of Genesis. If a man has money to start with, he can add to it +as easily as you can roll up a snowball--it's no credit to him. But I've +had only my brains. I've seen money where other men couldn't, and +nothing has stood in my way of getting to it; that's the whole secret of +success. And my attitude's fair--you couldn't find a fairer. When one of +your clerks falls sick, you pay him his full salary for three or four +months till he's around again. _I_ know! Well, I don't do any such +stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list once for three +months, and nobody paid me. After the first month I was bounced, and I +didn't expect anything else. I didn't expect any philanthropical +business, and I don't give it. That's fair, isn't it? I don't give +quarter, and I don't expect any. If I'm squeezed, I pay. I don't stand +still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can do and what I +can't do. I don't snivel about what you call moral obligations; I only +recognize money obligations. Why, see here, Alexander," he broke off, +"if you use the influence you spoke of, you don't have to tell me what +it is--you don't have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater himself +needn't know that you had anything to do with it." + +"But I'd know," said Justin quietly. + +Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded. + +"Very well, then, it comes down to this: If you fail us now, out of any +of your fool scruples toward that poor devil across the street,--who's +bound to get the blood sucked out of him anyway,--you ruin your own +prospects, and you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. +By----, if you see any honor in that, I don't." + +"Mr. Leverich," said Justin, raising his head swiftly, with a steely +gleam in his eyes that matched the other's, "when I try to cheat you or +Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, I'll give you +leave to say what you please. At present I'll say good morning." + +Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his +desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so, +against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next +room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge +that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than +the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. +Warren, of Rondell Brothers. Each turned to look back at the other, and +both men bowed; the action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted +by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the +street. + +The clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt actively +stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward Lewiston's +note the different sums coming in this month. There were large bills to +be paid to the typometer's credit by several firms, one of them +Coneways'. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for the +entire year--it was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to +Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next, +Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their +principal after these intervening six months of the year were over. +Well, let them! Lewiston's note was what he had to think of now. + +All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious to the +sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate +success; it is the one trite, universal reason for starting--that faith +is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful +ventures, while never really succeeding, do not fail at once; they are +always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking lower all the +time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith +alone--a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to +seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this +flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. +For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, +failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he +should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think +harder to find a way of accomplishment, that was all. + +His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverich's, but it +lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned down the street that led to +the factory, unaltered, since his first coming to it, save for the +transformation of the neglected house he had noticed then, with its +grewsome interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted shop +long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. There was not a +corner, not a building, along that too familiar way, that was not hung +with some thought of care; there were moments of such strong repulsion +that he felt as if he couldn't turn down that street again--moments +lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched yawning mouth +of a doorway occasioned a physical nausea--a foolish, womanish state +which irritated him. + +The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment of orders and +bills, and letters on minor points, and questions as to the typometer. +The mail was rather apt to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large +trade. Two letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium on +the use of the machine. In spite of an enormous and long-outstanding +bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for payment--one of +those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become +staggering--there was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the +destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power. + +A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in his employ, came in +to get help in collecting his insurance; she was timid before Justin, +deeply grateful for his kind and effective assistance. Two men called at +different times, for advice and introductions to important people. A +friend brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. There +was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to do with the payment +of one's bills. + +Justin took both the friend and the customer out to lunch, his pleasant +sense of hospitality only dimmed by the disagreeable fact of its taking +every cent of the five dollars he had expected to last him for the week. +He was "strapped." The luncheon took longer, also, than he had counted +on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed to lead up only to sordid +and anxious details and a sense of non-accomplishment, induced also by +small requisitions from different people presupposing cash from a +cash-drawer that was empty. + +It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harker's assistance, on the +large sums coming in at the end of the month from Coneways. There were a +hundred ways for them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, +after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would be satisfied +with a partial payment and extend the rest of the note. While they were +still consulting, word was brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there. + +Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, +smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and fashion set at odds at +present by a very pale and anxious face and eager, dilated black eyes. +He cut short Justin's greeting with the words: + +"I've just come over to speak about that note, Alexander." + +"Well, I was just wanting to speak to you about it myself," said Justin +easily. "Have a cigar?" + +"Thank you," said Lewiston mechanically, and as mechanically holding out +his hand for the cigar, evidently forgetting it the next moment. "The +fact is, I don't want to seem importunate, but if you could pay off that +note fifteen days before date,--a week from to-day, that is,--we'd +discount it to satisfy you. I didn't want to bother you about it, and I +tried outside first, but nobody will take up the paper just now, except +at a ruinous rate. If you could make it convenient, Alexander----" Young +Lewiston sat with his small, eager face bent forward over his knees, his +lips twitching slightly. "You know that money wasn't loaned on strictly +business principles, Alexander, but for friendship; I got father to +consent to it. If you could let us have it now, it would save us a world +of trouble. It's really not much--only ten thousand." + +Justin shook his head, his keen blue eyes fixed on the other. "I can't +let you have it, Lewiston; I wish I could! But I'm waiting on payments +myself. Can't you pull out without it?" + +Lewiston drew in his breath. "Oh, yes, of course we'll have to, but it +means--Well, I know you would if you could, Alexander, I told father +so--father in a way holds me responsible, he was in London when I +renewed the note the last time. There isn't anything to interfere with +the payment when it's due?" + +"On my honor, no," said Justin. "You shall have it then without fail." + +"For if that should slip up--" continued young Lewiston, wrapped in +somber contemplation of his own affairs alone; he threw his arms outward +with a gesture suddenly tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then +wrung Justin's hand silently and departed. + +"Are you busy, Alexander? They said I could come in." + +"Why, Girard!" + +Justin wheeled a chair around with an instantly brightened face. "Sit +down. I'm mighty glad to see you." He looked smilingly at his visitor, +whose presence, long-limbed, straight, clean, and clear-eyed, always +elicited a peculiar admiration from other men. "I heard that you had a +room at the Snows' now, while Billy is away, but I haven't laid eyes on +you for a month." + +"I've been coming in on a later train every morning and going out again +on a very much later one at night. I'm back in town on the paper for a +while." + +"Why don't you settle down to something worth while?" asked Justin, with +the reserved disapproval of the business man for any mode of life but +his own. + +"Settle down to this kind of thing?" said Girard thoughtfully. "Well, I +did think of it last year, when I undertook those commissions for you. +But what's the use--yet awhile, at any rate? You see, I can always make +enough money for what I want and to spare, and there's nobody else to +care. I like my liberty! The love of trade doesn't take hold of me, +somehow--and you have to have such a tremendous amount of capital to +keep your place. By the way, have you sold the island yet?" The island +was a small one up near Nova Scotia, taken once for a debt. + +"Not yet." + +Girard gave him a quick glance--with the instant penetration of a man +who has known hard times himself, he detected the signs of it in +another; the perception lent a sort of under-warmth and kindness to his +voice as he asked: "How are things going with you?" + +"Fine," said Justin in a conventionally prosperous tone, with a sudden +sight of a bottomless pit yawning below him. "I've had a few things on +my mind lately--but they're all right now. By the way, how do you like +it at the Snows'?" + +"Oh, fairly well." Girard's gray eyes twinkled in an irrepressible +smile. "I score high at present. They all approve of me, and I am told +that I am the only man who has never run into the Boston fern or got +tangled in the Wandering Jew. Miss Bertha and I have long talks +together--she's great. As for Mrs. Snow--she heard Sutton speak of her +the other night to Ada as 'the old lady.' I assure you that since--" He +shook his head, and both men laughed. + +"Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again," said Justin +hospitably, indescribably cheered by some soul-offered sympathy that lay +below the trivial converse. + +"Thank you," said Girard, an indefinable stiffening change coming over +him momentarily, to disappear at once, however, as he went on: "By the +way, I mustn't forget what I came for before I hurry off." + +He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as he rose. "Do +you remember lending that fifty dollars to my friend Keston last year? +He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this." + +"I'd forgotten all about it," averred Justin. He had not realized until +he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength, +with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of it--nothing +back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of +life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand +dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with +this paltry fifty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free +breath, felt a sheer, uncalculating lightness of spirit that showed how +terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very +feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine. + +He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to +Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers: + +"Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways' isn't due +until the 31st--the very last minute! But he's always prompt, thank +Heaven--what are you doing?" + +"Knocking on wood," said Harker, with a grim smile. + +"Oh, knock on wood all you want to," returned Justin. + +He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers. +It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week. +While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his +eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: + + GREAT CRASH + CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL + IN BOSTON + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY + + +"I don't think Justin looks very well," said Dosia that afternoon. She +was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out +half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been +up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she +looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not very strong. + +The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with only a round +forehead and a small pink nose visible, was of that satisfactory variety +entirely given to sleep; Zaidee and even Redge, adoring little sister +and brother, had been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely +unstirring was their small burden. Lois, who had passionately rebelled +against the prospect of additional motherhood, exhibited a not unusual +phase of it now in as passionately adoring this second boy. He seemed +peculiarly, intensely her own, not only a baby, but a spiritual +possession that communicated a new strength to her. Lois was changed. +She had always been beautiful, as a matter of fact, but there was now +something withheld, mysterious, in her expression, as if she were taking +counsel of some half-slumberous force within, like one listening at a +shell for the murmur of the ocean. + +Not only Lois, but everything else, seemed changed to Dosia, at the same +time being also flatly, unchangeably natural. She had longed--oh, how +she had longed!--to be back here. Even while loving and working in her +so-called home, she had felt that this was her real home, although here +her cruelest blows had fallen on her; even while bleeding with the +wrench of parting from her own flesh and blood, she had felt that this +was the true home, for here she had really lived--and it was the home of +the nicer, more delicate instincts. After the crude housekeeping, the +lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing a grinding struggle with +circumstance, it was a blessed relief to get back to a sphere where +minor details were all in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, +with their three children, kept only one maid now, but even that +restriction did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and cold water! + +Yet she had also dreaded this returning,--how she had dreaded it!--with +that old sickening shame which came over her inevitably as she thought +of certain people and places and days. The mere thought of seeing Mrs. +Leverich or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was like passing +through fire. One braces one's self to withstand the pain of scenes of +joy or sorrow revisited, to find that, after all, when the moment comes, +there is little of that dreaded pain--it has been lived through and the +climax passed in that previsioning which imagination made more intense, +more harrowingly real, than the reality. + +[Illustration: _Even Redge had been allowed to hold him_] + +Mrs. Leverich stopped her carriage one day to greet Dosia, and to ask +her, with a tentative semblance of her old effusion, to come and make +her a visit--an effusion which immediately died down into complete +non-interest, on Dosia's polite refusal; and the incident was not +especially heart-racking at the time, though afterwards it set her +unaccountably trembling. Mrs. Leverich had in the carriage with her a +small, thin, long-nosed, under-bred-looking man with a pale-reddish +mustache and hair, who, gossip said, passed most of his time at the +Leverichs'--he was seen out driving alone with Myra nearly every day. He +was "an old friend from home." It had been gossip at first, but it was +growing to be scandal now, with audible wonder as to how much Mr. +Leverich knew about it. + +Her avoidance of George Sutton was as nothing to his desire of avoiding +her; he dived with surreptitious haste down side streets when he saw her +coming, or disappeared within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted +him inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce to take +off his hat and murmur, "Good morning," he turned pale and was evidently +scared to death. After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snow--usually Ada and her mother, +though occasionally Bertha served as escort instead of the latter. The +elder Snows, in spite of this apparent security, were in a state of +constant nervous tension over Mr. Sutton's attention to Ada; he had not +"spoken" yet, but it had begun to be felt severely of late that he ought +to speak. Whenever Ada came into the house, her face was eagerly scanned +by both mother and sister to see from its look if it bore any trace of +the fateful words having been uttered. Everyone knew, though how no one +could tell, that that bold thing, Dosia Linden, had tried to get him +once, and failed. + +The thing that had unaccountably stirred her most since her arrival was +an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge +held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily +along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the +post-office; he seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw +back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them +white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, +with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, +and came forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright courtesy, a +punctilious warmth of manner. He walked along with her a few paces as he +talked, lifting Zaidee over a flooded crossing, before going once more +on his way. He was nothing to Dosia, the stranger who had killed her +ideal, yet all day it was as if his image were photographed in the +colors of life upon the retina of her eye; she could not push it away, +try as she might. + +Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through +the letters written by Lois; he had been reported as going on in his old +way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing +more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except +Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her now position of +sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an +outsider any more; she _belonged_. + +[Illustration: _After this he only appeared in the village street +guarded on either side by a female Snow_] + +As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with +something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be +loved, now felt--after a year of trial and conflict with death--that she +only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even +though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and +tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, +fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal +depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but +when Dosia "said her prayers," she got, child-fashion, very near to a +Someone who brought her an intimate, tender comfort of resurrection and +of life. + +"I don't think Justin seems well," she repeated, Lois, looking up at her +with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice +of the remark. "He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I +came." + +"He has something on his mind," assented Lois, with a note of languor in +her voice, "I suppose it's the business--I made up my mind to ask him +about it to-night; he has been out every evening lately, and I hardly +see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don't get +down to breakfast." + +"Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning," cried Dosia, with +compunction at having so far forgotten it. "He said that Mr. Larue had +come in to inquire about you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket +of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow." + +"Eugene Larue!" Lois' lips relaxed into a pleased curve, a slight color +touched her cheek. "That was very nice of him; he knew I'd like to look +forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!" + +"I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after you," continued +Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that +tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes. + +"Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows'. Billy's out West." + +"So I've heard," said Dosia. + +It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of +all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her +pathway now, after that desire was gone! + +"You'd better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired, it's time for +you to take a little rest. I'll see to the children, I hope baby will +stay asleep. Let me put this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the +shades?" + +"No, I'd rather have the light. Please hand me that book over there on +the stand," said Lois, holding out her hand for the big, old-fashioned +brown volume that Dosia brought to her. + +"You oughtn't to read, you ought to go to sleep," said Dosia, with +tender severity. + +"I'm not going to read," returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over +the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the +sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with +him--alone with him, to think. + +The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the title-page +proclaimed, "The Woman's Kingdom," and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A +neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her +convalescence--in all the time she had had it, she had never read any +further than that title-page. + +There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another +son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a +woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again, +spiritually as well as physically; in those long, restful hours +afterwards, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a +freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed +tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger +bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision, and a +peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown +before. + +Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward +either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little +boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible +corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her--for a +little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of +those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; +even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on +one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet +to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband's gaze when +he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk +about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was +as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child. + +One evening he came in to sit by her,--her convalescence had been a long +and dragging one,--and she had paused in the midst of telling him +something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised +herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had +fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly +exhausted! Everything proclaimed it--his attitude, grimly grotesque in +the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he +had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head +resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply +upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in +those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the +transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly +lifeless. He slept without moving,--almost, it seemed, without +breathing,--while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, +dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed +change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she +stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed +to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an +icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, +never---- + +Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, "Did you +speak?" + +"Oh, you frightened me so! Don't go to sleep like that again," said +Lois, with a shaking voice. "Come here." + +He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers +with a rush of painful emotion. "Why, you mustn't get worked up over a +little thing like that," he objected lightly, going out of the room +afterwards with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him +with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought +of him without any idea of benefit to herself. + +The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her +attention oddly--"The Woman's Kingdom." Another phrase correlated with +it in her memory--"Queen of the Home." The home was supposed to be +woman's domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, +sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. _The Woman's Kingdom, +Queen of the Home._ Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of +retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby's fingers; _they_ +kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, +bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a +queen! Home and the heart of her husband--there lay her woman's kingdom, +her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none +other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as +her rule made it; she must be judged by her government--as she was queen +enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words. + +Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,--set +in motion by those magic words,--when she lay at rest in the afternoons, +with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside +her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never +perceive from imagination, but only from experience--who cannot even +adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not +personally lived through. No advice touches them, for the words that +embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past +seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same +circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom +look back--the present, that is always climbing on into the future, +occupies them exclusively. + +Lois with "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand, felt that some source of +power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her +grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish +thoughts came with the words--historic names of women whom men had loved +devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they +themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There +were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other +generations; Queens indeed! She couldn't really interest one man! She +thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those +who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the +street had no other object in life than purveying to the household +comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from +him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple +farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage, +nothing more; they were bored to death by each other's society. Another +couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both +sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be +satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were +an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very +much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one +husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young. +Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man +admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired +her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, +betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it +accomplished? + +How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue--she +could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of +conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations +were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her +woman's kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if +he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to +know--get his guidance--But Lois was before all things inviolably a +wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and +Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief +moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, +conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene +Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that +way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she +and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had +known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test--the man who +was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband. +Justin! + +With "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek +of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some +knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now +really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well--that +was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make +him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; +she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able +to think of nothing, of no one, but her--he had not always thought of +her! No, no--she would not remember that, _she would not pity herself_. +She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort--men liked you +to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of +his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, +painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he +didn't look well. Oh, when he came home to-night----! + +She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown +with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more +brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply +blue. The children exclaimed over their "pretty mamma"; she looked +younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could +not help saying: + +"How lovely you are, Lois! And you're all dressed up, too; do you expect +anyone?" + +"Only Justin," said Lois. + +"Only Justin"! The words brought an exquisite joy with them--only +Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour +now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was +often late--Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two +women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterwards, an +unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop; Lois, divested of her +rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and +soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help +unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an +interval of quiet she went up again, to find Lois at last lying down. + +"It's eleven o'clock, Lois; I think I'll go to bed. Shall I leave the +gas burning down-stairs?" + +"Yes, please do; he can't get anything now but the last train out." + +"And you don't want me to stay here with you?" + +"No--oh, no." + +As once before, Lois waited for that train--yet how differently! If that +injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word, +she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed +itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity +herself--she would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that +way. + +The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, as she got up and +sat by the window, looking out from behind the curtain, her beautiful +braided hair over one shoulder. The last train came in, the people from +it, in twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. He +must have missed that last train out--of course he must have missed it! + +We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; the amount of +"worry" more or less willingly indulged in by uncontrolled minds seems +at times enough to swamp the understanding. Yet there is a foreboding, +unsought, unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be +counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed quality of +truth. + +Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE + + +"And you haven't heard _anything_ of him yet?" + +"Not yet, Mrs. Alexander. I'm sorry--oh, so sorry--to have nothing more +to tell you. But I'm sure we'll hear something before morning." + +Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly on +Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little hallway, looking up at +him, with Dosia behind her. This was the third night since that one when +Justin had failed to appear, and there had been no word from him in the +interim. Owing to that curious way that women have of waiting for events +to happen that will end suspense, rather than seeking to end it by any +unaccustomed action of their own, no inquiry had been made at the +Typometer Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which had +been passed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing +him walk in. However, nobody at the company knew anything of Justin's +movements, except that he had left the office rather early the afternoon +before, and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It was presumable +that he had been called suddenly out of town, and had sent some word to +Mrs. Alexander that had miscarried. + +That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who was evidently +disquieted, though bluffly and rather irritatingly making light of her +fears; he seemed to be both a little reluctant and a little +contemptuous. + +"My dear Mrs. Alexander, you can't expect a fellow to be always tied to +his wife's apron-strings! He doesn't tell you everything. We like to +have a free foot once in a while. Why, my wife's glad when I get off for +a day or two--coaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything +happening to Alexander--well, an able-bodied man can look out for +himself every time; there's nothing in the world to be anxious about. +He's meant to wire to you and forgotten to do it, that's all--I forgot +it myself last year, when I was called away suddenly, but Myra didn't +turn a hair; she knew I was all right. And if I were you, Mrs. +Alexander,--this is just a tip,--I wouldn't go around telling _everyone_ +that he's gone off and you don't know where he is. It's the kind of +thing folks get talking about in all kinds of ways; his affairs aren't +in any too good shape, as he may have told you." + +"Isn't the business all right?" queried Lois, with a puzzled fear. + +"Oh, yes, of course--all right; but--I wouldn't go around wondering +about his being away; he's got his own reasons. You haven't a telephone, +have you? I'll send around word to have one put in to-day. I'll tell you +what, I'll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the +quiet--he's got lots of wires he can pull. You won't need me any more." + +Leverich's meeting with Dosia had been characterized on his part by a +show of brusque uninterest; he seemed to her indefinably lowered and +coarsened in some way--his cheeks sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant +admission that he must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. +And Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits +from him, caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her, she +ought not to let that fact be defaced, but everything connected with +that time seemed to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of +horror. All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an +undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women +tenfold greater when he was gone. + +Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had +seen him both times; he had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy, +and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for +details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs. +Alexander, but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day +he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly +nothing in Dosia's quietly impersonal attitude to call it forth. Her +face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for +anyone to see--poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her woman's +lesson of concealment. + +But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his +sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have +affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, and with a +hundred lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the +tortured wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of +his being entirely one with her in its absorption--of there being no +other interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justin's return. +When Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be +set at rest; during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were +swept away, everything was on the right train, word would arrive from +Justin at once; and when he left, all was black and terrible again. + +The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these strange days when +mamma never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made +merry for them, and saw to the household, which was dependent on the +service of a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to put +her young arms around Lois and hold her close with aching pity. + +The suspense of these days had changed Lois terribly--her cheeks were +hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes looked twice their natural size, +with the black circles below them. Only the knowledge that her baby's +welfare--perhaps his life--depended on her, kept her from giving way +entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack of croup, +which necessitated a visit from the doctor and further anxiety. Toward +afternoon of this third day a man came to put in the telephone, which +set them in touch with the unseen world. Girard's voice over it later +had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate ending of the +mystery. + +Everything was excitement--delicacies were bought, in case Justin might +like them, Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best "to see +dear papa," and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired +result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated +promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as soon as he +got in. + +Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in the suddenly +sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, at Girard's word that nothing +more had been heard, as she was still looking up at him everything +turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little +spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head +pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard +leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and +contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as +if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion; she looked up at +Girard and tried to smile with piteous, brimming eyes. + +"Ah, don't!" he said, with a quick gesture. His voice had an odd sound, +as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with it mingled also a compassionate +tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his +whole attitude as he bent over her. + +"You're very good to be so sorry for me," she whispered. + +He made a swift gesture of protest. "There's one thing I can't stand--to +see a woman suffer." + +She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him +to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she +were trying to concentrate her mind: + +"You have known sorrow?" + +"Yes." + +"Tell me." + +He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of +another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both +spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn +to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there +in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped +loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere +beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a +spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. In such +moments as these she prayed for Lawson. + +"I"--it was Girard who spoke at last--"my mother--Cater said once that +he'd told you something about me." + +"Yes, I remember." + +"It's hard to talk about it, yet sometimes I feel as if I'd like to. You +see, I was so little when we drifted off, she and I. I didn't know how +to help, how to save her anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since +that I ought to have known--I ought to have known!" His hands clenched, +his voice had subsided to a groan. + +"You were her comfort when you least thought it," said Lois. + +"Perhaps; I've always hoped so, in my saner moments. No matter how I +should try I could never tell anyone what that time was really like. It +seems now as if we were wandering for years, but I don't suppose it was +for so very long. We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at +night, always trying to keep away from people, when--she thought we were +going back to our old home in the South, and that they would prevent +us." He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that Ancient +Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a forbidden +subject, probe it to its haunting depths. "Did Cater tell you how she +died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in her arms +at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; +and I didn't even have a pillow for her when she was dying; it's one of +those things you can never make up for--that you can never change, no +matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to you when +you least expect it." + +Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: "But the pain ended +in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to +know that you grieved." + +"Yes, I believe that," he acquiesced simply. "I'm glad you said it now. +I couldn't rest until I got money enough to take her out of her pauper +grave and lay her by the side of her own people at home." + +"And you have had a pretty hard time." + +"Oh, that's nothing!" He squared his shoulders with unconscious rebuttal +of sympathy. "When I was a kid, perhaps--but I get a lot of pleasure out +of life." + +"But you must be lonely without anyone belonging to you," said Lois, +trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. "Wouldn't you be happier if +you were married?" + +He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a slight flush that +seemed to come from the embarrassment of some secret thought. The +action, and the change of expression, made him singularly charming. +"Possibly; but the chance of that is small. Women--that is, unmarried +women--don't care for my society." + +"Oh, oh!" protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as she looked at him, of +how much the reverse the truth must be. "But if you found the right +woman you might make her care for you." + +He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray eyes. "No; there +you're wrong. I'd never make any woman care for me, because I'd never +want to. If she couldn't care for me without my _making_ her--! I'd have +to know, when I first looked at her, that she was _mine_. And if she +were not, if she did not care for me herself, I'd never want to make +her--never!" + +"Oh, oh!" protested Lois again, with interested amusement, shattered the +next instant as a fragile glass may be shattered by the blow of a +hammer. + +The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, closing the +intervening door behind him. The curtain of anxiety, lifted for +breathing-space for a moment, hung over them again somberly, like a +pall. Where was Justin? + +The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on Girard's movements; +his low, murmuring voice told nothing. When he returned to where they +stood, his face was impassive. + +"Nothing new; I'm just going to town for a couple of hours, that's all." + +"Oh, must you leave us?" + +"I'm coming back, if you'll let me." He bent over Lois with that earnest +look which seemed somehow to insure protection. "I want you to let me +stay down-stairs here all night, if you will; I'm going to make +arrangements to get a special message through, no matter what time it +comes, and I'll sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you and +Miss Linden can sleep." + +"Oh, I'd be so glad to have you here! Redge has that croupy cough again. +But you can't sit up," said Lois. + +"Why not? It's luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of +books around. I'll be back in a couple of hours without fail." + +A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could +have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he +gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, +who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the +typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated +man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a +decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his +body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of +being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely +at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and +handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating +himself. + +"Thank you very much," said Lois. "This is the money, I suppose. I'm +sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself, I thought you +might send me a check." + +Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. "That's the +trouble, Mrs. Alexander, we can't send any checks, Mr. Alexander is the +one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexander's name. I went to Mr. +Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things, but +he doesn't seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us +out easily enough if he wanted to. I--there's no use keeping it back, +Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay +away. He ought to be home." + +"Why, yes," said Lois. + +"Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant +position." Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his +gaze on the ground. "The business requires the most particular +management at the moment--the most particular. I--" He raised his eyes +with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that +this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth +by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the +daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at +Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she +did--knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better. + +He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: "Mrs. Alexander, your +husband and I have worked together for a year and a half now, with never +a word between us. I'm ready to swear by him any moment, if I've got him +to swear by. I'll back him up in anything, no matter what, if it's his +say-so--we've pulled through a good many tight places. But I can't do it +alone; it's madness to try. If he doesn't show up, I'd better close the +place down at once." + +"Why do you say this to me?" asked Lois, shrinking a little. + +"Why? because,--Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to mince words; if you +know where your husband is, for God's sake, get word to him to come +back--every minute is precious. He may be ill--Heaven knows he had +enough to make him so; my wife knows the strain I've been through, she +says she wonders I'm alive,--but he can't look after his health now. If +he's on top of ground, he's got to _come_. I've put every cent I own +into this business. I haven't drawn my whole salary, even, for months. I +don't know what reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustn't +give out now." + +"Mr. Harker!" cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, who had come +forward. "What does he mean?" + +"She doesn't know where her husband is," said the girl convincingly. Her +eyes and Mr. Harker's met. The somber eagerness faded out of his; he +sighed and rose. + +"Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think I'll hurry to catch +the next train; I haven't been home to my dinner yet." + +"Won't you have something here before you go?" asked Lois. "It's so +late." + +"Oh, that's nothing, I'm used to it," returned Mr. Harker, with a pale +smile and the passive, self-effacing business manner as he departed, +while Lois went up-stairs once more. The baby cried, and she soothed +him, holding the warm little form close, closer to her--something +tangible before she put him down again to step back into this strange +void where Justin was not. + +For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the +existence of a world beyond her ken--a world that had been Justin's. New +as the visitor's words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of +herculean struggle; the way this man had looked--his wife had "wondered +that he was still alive." And Justin--where was he now? _She_ had not +noticed, she had not wondered--until lately. + +Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her help, it was the one +thing now that kept her reason firm. She knew that she had not been all +unfaithful; sometimes he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she +was near. She had suffered, too, _she_ had longed for his help and +sympathy. No, she would not think of _that_; she would not! When two are +separated, one must love enough to bridge the gulf--what matter which +one? It seemed now as if there were so much that she might have given, +as if all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might have +been poured out and poured out at his feet--lavished on him, without +regard to need or fitness or expense, as Mary lavished her precious box +of spikenard on One she loved. Now that he was gone, there could be +nothing too hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to +have said to him. + +Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him hoarsely to be still; +and then, suddenly conscience-stricken and fearful at the slighting of +this other demand of love,--what awful reprisal might it not exact from +her?--she went to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy +that Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother would +stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the grinding and +destroying wheel of thought had her bound to it once more. + +He could not have left her of his own will! If he did not come, it would +be because he was dead--and then he could never know, never, never know. +There would be nothing left to her but the place where he had been. She +looked at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them for +the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and fell on her +knees, and went on them around the room, dragging herself from chair to +sofa, from sofa to bed,--these were the Stations of the Cross that she +was making,--with sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying +with them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the Almighty. +Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought of her; on this +table--here--and here--and here his head had lain. Her tears ceased; she +buried her face in the pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was, +in this world or another. For he was her husband--where he was she must +be, either in body or in spirit. + +The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice at the other +end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it seemed; withholding +information from any other. The doctor rang up, in response to an +earlier call, with directions for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been +laid down when the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the +ringing of bells! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO + + +This time, of course, the visitor was Mrs. Snow. In any exigency, any +mind- and body-absorbing event of life, the inopportune presence of Mrs. +Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came always as one of +those exasperating recurrences which bring with them a ridiculously +fresh irritation each time. It seemed to be the one extra thing you +couldn't stand; in either trouble or joy she affected you like a +clinging, ankle-flapping mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to +Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the +greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those +passion-depths of darkness so that Mrs. Snow wouldn't suspect anything. +She had an uncanny faculty of divining just what you didn't want her to. + +Once before Lois had suspended tragedy for Mrs. Snow. The same things +happen to us over and over again daily in our crowded yet restricted +lives--it is we who change in our meeting with them. We have our great +passions, our great joys, our heartbreaks, no matter how small our +environment. + +"How do you do, my dear? Mr. Girard has just told me that he was going +to stay here to-night, in Mr. Alexander's absence. He said little Redge +was threatened with the croup. Now, if I had only known that Mr. +Alexander was away, _I_ could have come and stayed with you!" + +"Oh, that wasn't at all necessary," said Lois hastily. "Thank you very +much. Do sit down, won't you, Mrs. Snow?" + +"Only for a minute, then; I must go back to Bertha," said Mrs. Snow, +seating herself and fumbling for something under her cloak. "I just came +over to read you a letter. It's in my bag--I can't seem to find it. +Well, perhaps I'd better rest for a minute." Mrs. Snow's face looked +unusually lined and set; in spite of her plaintiveness, her eyes had a +harassed glitter. + +"Isn't it rather late for you to be out alone?" asked Lois. + +"Yes; Ada would have come around here with me, but she was expecting Mr. +Sutton. She was expecting him last night, but he didn't come. If _I_ +were a young lady, I'd let a gentleman wait for _me_ the next time; it +used to be thought more attractive, in my day, but Ada's so afraid of +not seeming cordial; gentlemen seem to be so sensitive nowadays! I said +to her, 'Ada, when a man is enough at home in a house to kick the cat, +and ask for cake whenever he feels like it, I do _not_ see that it is +necessary to stand on ceremony with him.' But Ada thinks differently." + +"It is difficult to make rules," said Lois vaguely. + +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Snow. "As I was saying to Bertha, you don't find a +young man like Mr. Girard so considerate of everyone--not that he's so +_very_ young, either; I'm sure he often appears much older than he is. +It's his manner--he has a manner like my dear father. He and Bertha have +long chats together; really, he is what _I_ would call quite attentive, +though she won't hear of such a thing--but sometimes young men _do_ take +a great fancy for older girls. I had a friend who married a gentleman +twenty-seven years younger--he died soon afterwards. But many people +think nothing of a little difference of twelve or fifteen years. I said +to Bertha this morning, 'Bertha, if you'd dress yourself a little +younger--if you'd only wear a blue bow in your hair.' But no; I can't +say anything nowadays to my own children without being flown at!" Mrs. +Snow's voice trembled. "If my darling William were here!" + +"Have you heard from William lately?" asked Lois, with supreme effort. + +"My dear, he's in Chicago. I came over to read you a letter from him +that I got to-night. That new postman left it at the Scovels', by +mistake, and they never sent it over until a little while ago. There was +a sentence in it," Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, "that I thought +you'd like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. 'Next month I hope to be +able to send you more'--no, no, that's not it. 'When my socks get holes +in them I throw them'--that's not it, either. Oh! he says, 'I caught a +glimpse of Mr. Alexander last night, getting on a West Side car'--this +was written yesterday morning. 'I called to him, but too late. I'm +sorry, for I'd like to have seen him.' That's all, but Mr. Girard seemed +so pleased with the letter, I promised that I would bring it around to +you that very minute,--_he_ had to run for the train,--but I was +detained. He thought you'd like to hear that William had seen Mr. +Alexander." + +Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois faint. Yet, after +Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions began to repeat themselves +again. Justin was alive--Justin was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive +now? And why had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no word? +The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. Every fear that +imagination could devise seemed to center around this new fact. + +She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little drawing-room, +making it ready for Girard's occupancy--pulling out a big chair for his +use, and putting fresh books on the table. The maid had long ago gone to +bed, and there was coffee to be made for him--he might get hungry in the +night. When he came in at last, he brought all the brightness and +courage of hope with him; he had wired to William, he had phoned to a +dozen different places in Chicago. + +"Oh, what should we do without you?" breathed Lois, her foot on the +stairway. + +"It doesn't seem to me I've helped you very much so far, our one clue +has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. +Alexander; take all the rest you can. I'm here to do the watching. If +there's anything really to tell, I'll call you, I promise faithfully. +What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me?" + +"There was a message for you while you were gone," said Dosia in a low +tone. + +His eyes assented. "Yes, I went there--to the place that they--but it +wasn't Alexander, I'm glad to say, though I was afraid when I went +in----" + +"I know," said Dosia. + +Another strange night had begun, with the master of the house away. Lois +went to her room to lie down clothed, jumping up to come to the head of +the stairs whenever the telephone-bell rang, and then going back again +when she found that those who were consulting were asking for +information instead of giving it, but by and by the messages ceased. + +Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that he had been gone +for years, and tried confusedly to plan out the future. There were the +children--how should she support them? She must support them. It was +hard to get work when you had a baby. If she hadn't the baby--no one +should take the baby from her! She clasped him to her for a moment in +terror, as if she were being hunted, before she grew calm and began +planning again. There was only a little money left--to-morrow they must +still eat. She must make the money last. + +Dosia, on the bed by Redge's crib, went softly after a while into the +other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could +not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, +so far removed was he from her dream of him; through all his softness, +his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else +did--though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too--that +the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up +from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening +streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of +divination, that in spite of all his strong, capable dealing with +actualities and his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of +his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theory--theory +that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry +for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to +her. + +Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired +eyes wide open, close to Redge's crib, with his little hot hand clinging +to hers, the mere fact of Girard's bodily presence in the house, +down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldn't get +away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it +called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with +Lawson--unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. +This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not +to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She +tried to lose it in the thought of Lois' great trouble, of this +weighting, pitiful mystery of Justin's absence--of what it meant to him +and to the household; she tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, +with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing +availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness +of Girard's bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so +that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice +spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly: + +"Dosia?" + +"Yes, Lois, dearest, I'm here." + +"Has any word come from Justin?" + +"No." + +Lois shivered. "I think, when Redge wakes up next, you'd better give him +a drink of water, he sounds so hoarse. I've used all I brought up. Do +you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I can't +slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher." + +"Yes," said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly +over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall. + +It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. Dosia went down +the low, wide stairs with that indescribable air of the watcher in the +night. Her white cotton gown, the same that she had worn throughout the +afternoon, had lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted +folds; the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white +necktie was half untied. One cheek was warm where it had pressed the +pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half loosened, hung against +it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a rayed starriness, the pupils +contracted from the sudden light--her expression, tired and half +bewildered, had in it somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in +the unwonted middle of the night, who might go naturally and comfortably +into any kind arms held out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her +fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat +leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on +the arm of it and his head on his hand; the books and bric-a-brac on the +table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray +containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some +biscuits; a newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the +light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect +which belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, when the +very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment from the life +of the day. Yet, in the midst of this night silence, this withdrawing of +the ordinary vital forces, the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be +extraordinarily instinct with vitality, even in that second before he +moved; his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with such +intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, as instantly +arresting, as the blast of a trumpet. + +At the sound of Dosia's light oncoming step opposite the door, he rose +at once, and with a quick stride stood beside her. He seemed tall and +unexpectedly dazzling as he confronted her; his deep set gray eyes were +very brilliant. + +"What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill?" + +"No--oh, no; the children have been restless, that is all," said Dosia, +recovering, with annoyed self-possession, from a momentary shock, and +feeling disagreeably conscious of looking tumbled and forlorn. "I came +down to get a pitcher of water." + +"Can't I get it in the dining-room for you?" he asked, with formal +politeness. + +"Thank you. The water isn't running in the butler's pantry, I have to go +in the kitchen for it. If you would light the gas there for me----" + +"Yes, certainly," he responded promptly, pushing the portieres aside to +make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light +the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed +floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in +which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as +of the deep darkness of the night outside around everything. + +A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a chair by the +chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its yellow eyes toward the +two intruders. + +"Let me fill this," said Girard, taking the pitcher from her--a rather +large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted vine for a handle--and +carrying it over to the faucet. The intimacy of the hour and the scene +emphasized the more the punctilious aloofness of this enforced +companionship. + +Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the water run, that it +might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a +drumhead. The moment--it was hardly more--seemed interminable to Dosia. +The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, +and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways that +her cheek might touch him in recognition. Some inner thought claimed +her, to the exclusion of the present; her eyes, looking dreamily before +her, took on that expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably +sweet. + +Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident that to +caress, to _touch_ her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of +any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair, +the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet +rounded form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as +inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with +always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated, +ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse +to come. + +The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She +raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color +flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was +nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came +toward her with the pitcher. + +"I'll take it now, please," she said hurriedly. + +"Won't you let me carry it up for you?" + +"Thank you, it isn't necessary. I'll go along, if you'll wait and turn +out the light." + +"Very well. You're sure it's not too heavy for you?" he asked anxiously, +as her wrists bent a little with the weight. + +"Oh, no, indeed," said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the +white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself +against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly. + +"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight +hold of it. + +Their hands touched--for the first time since the night of disaster, the +night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a +crash--the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water +streaming over it in rivulets. + +"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above. + +"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She +had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, +snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she +passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace +with her beating heart. + +When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the +tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago. + +[Illustration: _He came toward her with the pitcher_] + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE + + +Justin was in Chicago,--the fact was verified, and he would start for +home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting +one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate +relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon +her, all the more clingingly each time, not to be fully dissipated, +after all, until Justin's bodily return. + +Girard had gone back very early to the Snows' to breakfast. He talked to +Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, +wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went +about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night +before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something +else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; once--so far away that +night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that +protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange +resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude +to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately +revered, and which other men had not always used toward her. + +"Oh, he's _good_, he's good!" she whispered to herself, with the tears +blinding her, as she picked up Redge's blocks from the floor. She felt +Lawson's kisses on her lips, her throat--that cross of shame that she +held always close to her; George Sutton's fat face thrust itself +leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to +which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can +feel! Yet the sense of Girard's presence before was as nothing to her +sense of it now--it blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in +the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the quiet attitude +filled intensely with life; the turn of his head, the shape of his hand, +were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, +long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw--If she looked pale and inert, it +was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was +worn out with it. + +Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare +word that he had started home. Lois was not expecting him until nine +o'clock on the second morning, the early trains from town were coming +out at inconvenient intervals, but just as Lois had finished dressing, +she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for +fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again. + +Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she +entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. "Justin!" + +He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for +a moment, and then said, "You'd better sit down." + +"But, Justin--oh, my dearest, how ill you look!" She clung to him. +"Where have you been? Why didn't you send me any word?" + +"I've been to Chicago." + +"Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?" + +"I don't know." + +"You don't _know_?" + +"Lois, will you give me some coffee?" + +She poured out the cup with trembling hands, and sat while he took a +swallow of the hot fluid, still scanning the newspaper. At last she +said: + +"Aren't you going to tell me any more?" + +"There isn't any more to tell. There's no use talking about it. I +believe I had some idea of selling the island when I went to Chicago, +but I don't know how I got there. I didn't know I was there until I woke +up two nights ago at a little hotel away out on the West Side; Billy +pounded on the door, and said they told him I had been asleep for +twenty-eight hours. I suppose I was dead tired out. I don't want to +speak of it again, Lois; it wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to +happen. Will you tell Mary to bring in the rest of the breakfast? I must +catch the eight-thirty train back into town. I ought to have stopped +there, but I thought you might be bothered, so I came out first. Where +are the children?" + +"They are coming down now with Dosia," said his wife, helping Mary with +the dishes, as the patter of little feet sounded in the hall. Redge ran +up to his father, hitting him jubilantly with a small stick which he +held in his chubby hand, and bringing irritated reproof down upon him at +once; but Zaidee, her blue eyes open, her lips parted over her little +white teeth, slid into the arm outstretched for her, and stood there +leaning against "Daddy's" side, while he ate and drank hurriedly, with +only one hand at his disposal. Poor Lois could not help one pang of +jealousy at being shut out, but she heroically smothered the feeling. + +"Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money," +she ventured at last. + +"That was all right." + +"And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that night--until your +message came." + +"I hope you haven't been talking about this all over the place." + +"No--oh, no," said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless +injury. "Mr. Leverich--he was here one morning--said it was best not to. +He was rather unpleasant, though. But nobody knows about your being away +at all. You're not going now, Justin--without even seeing baby?" + +"I'll see him to-night when I come home," said Justin, rising. He kissed +the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, +standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the +hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something +else. + +"Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for," she said. + +"Yes, thank you." He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing +her for the first time, with a whispered "Poor girl!" That momentary +close embrace brought her a needed--oh, so needed!--crumb of comfort. +She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly +thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond. + +But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had +been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with +Justin's return, but it had not ended--in some sad, weighting fashion it +seemed to have just begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never +to hear any more? + +That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor--William +Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William's, but he had an +indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his +clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, +shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was +talking to Lois--his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear +out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight +as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands to cry, +"Oh, Billy, Billy, I'm so glad to see you! I am so glad--I can't tell +you how glad I am!" + +"All right, Sweetness, you're not going to lose me again," said William +encouragingly. "My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western +girls. Can't we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to +marry me before we talk any more." + +"Yes, do," said Dosia, dimpling. + +It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take +refuge from all disconcerting thoughts--and from the new embarrassment +of Girard's presence--with Billy in the corner of the other room, where +she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of +her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the +gloom. + +"Oh, but you've grown pretty!" he said, his hands clasped over his +knees, gazing at her. "That's right, get pink--it makes you prettier. I +like this slimpsy sort of dress you've got on; I like that black velvet +around your throat; I--have you missed me much?" + +"No," said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. "I've hardly thought of you +at all. But I feel now as if I had." + +Billy nodded. "All right, I'll pay you up for that some day. Oh, Dosia, +you may think I'm joking, but I'm not! There have been days and nights +when I've done nothing but plan the things I was going to do and say to +make you care for me--but they're all gone the moment I lay eyes on you. +I'll talk of whatever you like afterwards, but I've got to say +first,"--Billy's voice, deep and manly and confident, had yet a little +shake in it,--"that nobody is going to marry you but me, and don't you +forget it. I'm no kid any more." Something in his tone gave his words +emphasis. "I know how to look out for you better than anyone else does." + +"Dear Billy," said Dosia, touched, and resting her cheek momentarily +against the rough sleeve of his coat, "it's so good to have you back +again." + +"I'm no kid any more," said William warningly. + +Lois, who had been longing intolerably all day for evening to come, so +that she could be alone with her husband, sat in the drawing-room, +trying to sew with nervous, trembling fingers, while her husband, +looking frightfully tired, and Bailey Girard smoked and talked--of all +things in the world!--of the relative merits of live bait or "spoon" +bait in trolling, and afterwards went minutely into details of the +manufacture of artificial lures for catching trout. + +Those waste "social" hours of non-interest, non-satisfaction, that must +be lived through before one can get to the place just ahead of them--how +long, how unbearably long, they can seem! Lois' face twitched, as well +as her fingers; Girard's voice, lucidly expressionless, went on and on +in reminiscent detail, and Justin, looking frightfully tired, but +apparently deeply interested, remembered and remembered the day they +caught this, and the way they landed that and, with exasperating +monotony, drew diagrams corroboratingly with two fingers on the table +beside him. She did not realize, as women do not, that to Justin this +conversation, banal and irrelevant to any action of his present life or +his present anxiety, was like coming up from under-depths to breathe at +a necessary air-hole. + +After five days of torturing, unexplained absence, to talk of nothing +but fishing, as if his life depended on it! Girard himself had wondered, +but he accepted the position allotted to him as a matter of course. He +had thought, from Justin's manner to-day, that he was to know something +of his affairs; but if Justin did not choose to confide in him, that was +all right. Possibly the affairs were all right, too; they were none of +his business, anyway. + +Suddenly a word in the fishing conversation caught the ears of the two +who were sitting in the dining-room, in a momentary pause. + +"That was the kind Lawson Barr used when he went down on the +Susquehanna. By the way, I hear that he's dead." + +Lawson! Dosia's face changed as if a whip had flicked across it, and +then trembled back into its normal quiet. William leaned a little +nearer, his eyes curiously scanning her. + +"Hadn't you heard before?" + +"No; what?" + +"He's dead." + +"Lawson _dead_! Not Lawson?" Her dry lips illy formed the words. + +"Yes, Dosia--don't look like that--don't let them see in there, Girard +is looking at you; turn your face toward me. Leverich told us, coming up +to-night. Lawson died a week ago." + +"How?" + +"Fell from his horse somewhere up in a canon--he was drunk, I reckon. +They found him twenty-four hours afterwards; the superintendent of the +mines wrote to Leverich. He'd tried to keep pretty straight out there, +all but the drinking, I guess that was too much for him. It was the best +thing he could do--to die--as Girard says. Girard hates the very sound +of his name." + +"Oh," breathed Dosia painfully. + +"The superintendent said that some of the miners chipped in to bury him, +and the woman he boarded with sent a pencil scrawl along with the +superintendent's letter to say that she'd 'miss Mr. Barr dreadful,--that +he'd get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and the kids, they +thought the world of him.' She signed herself, 'A true mourner, Mrs. +Wilson.'" + +Lawson was dead! + +Dosia sat there, her hand clasping Billy's sleeve as at first--something +tangible to hold on to. Her gaze had gone far beyond the room, even that +haunting knowledge that Bailey Girard was near her was but a far, hidden +subconsciousness. She was out on a rocky slope beside a dead +body--Lawson, his head thrown back, those mocking, caressing eyes, those +curving, passionate lips, closed forever, the blood oozing from between +his dark locks. Always she had secretly visioned some distant day when, +Lucile-like, she might be near him, helping, though he would not know it +until he lay dying. As ever with poor Dosia, there was that sharp, +unbearable pang of self-reproach, of self-condemnation. Of what avail +her prayers, her belief in him, when he had died thus? Oh, she had not +prayed enough! She had not been good enough to be allowed to help; she +had not believed hard enough. Perhaps it had helped just a little--he +had "tried to keep pretty straight, all but the drinking; that was too +much for him." + +That covered some resistance in an under-world of which she knew +nothing. Poor Lawson, who had so early lost his chance, whose youth had +been poisoned at the start! In that grave where he lay, drunkard and +reveler, part of the youth of her, Dosia Linden,--once his promised +wife, to whom she had given herself in her soul,--must always lie too, +buried with him; nothing could undo that. To die so causelessly! But the +miners had "chipped in" for a resting-place for him--they had cared a +little; he had been kind to a woman and her little children--"the kids +had thought the world of him"; she was "a true mourner, Mrs. Wilson." +Dosia imagined him cheeringly cooking for this poor, worn-out mother, +carrying the children from place to place as she had once seen him carry +that little boy home from the ball, long, long ago. + +A strain from that unforgotten music came to her now, carrying her to +the stars! Oh, not for Lawson the splendid rehabilitation of the strong, +except in that one moment of denial when he had risen by the might of +his manhood in renunciation for her sake; only the humble virtues of his +weakness could be his--yet perhaps, in the sight of the God Who pities, +no such small offering, after all! + +"Dosia, you didn't really _care_ for him!" + +She smiled with pale lips and brimming eyes--an enigmatic answer which +Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, +until she got up, and, whispering, "I must go," left the room, +unconscious of Girard's following gaze. + +"I think we'd better be getting back," said the latter suddenly, in an +odd voice, rising in the middle of one of Justin's sentences as Billy +came straying in to join the group. + +Lois' heart leaped. She had felt that another moment of live bait and +reminiscences would be more than she could stand. + +"You need some rest," she said gratefully. "You have been tired out in +our service." + +"Oh, I'm not tired at all," he returned shortly. Her work seemed to +catch his eye for the first time, in a desire to change the subject. +"What are you making?" + +"A ball for Redge. I made one for Zaidee, and he felt left out--he's of +a very jealous disposition," she went on abstractedly. "Are you of a +jealous disposition, Mr. Girard?" + +"I!" He stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking +account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as +if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt +decision: "Yes, I am." + +"Don't look so like a pirate," said young Billy, giving him a thump on +the back that sent them both out of the house, laughing, when Lois rose +and went over to Justin's side. + +Husband and wife were at last alone. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR + + +In the days that followed, Justin, going away in the morning very early +with a set face, coming home very late in the evening with that set face +still, hardly seemed to notice the children or Dosia. Some tremulous +change had affected Dosia; her eyelashes were often mysteriously wet, +though no one saw her weep. + +"Justin has so much on his mind." Lois kept repeating the words over and +over, as if she found in them something by which to hold fast. Rich in +beauty as she was, full of love and tender favor, with the sweetness and +the pathos of an awakening soul, her husband seemed to have no eyes, no +thought for her. That one murmured sentence in the hallway was all her +food to live on--his only personal recognition of her. + +On the other hand, he poured out his affairs and his plans to her with a +freedom of confidence unknown before, a confidence which seemed to +presuppose her oneness of interest with him. He had talked exhaustively +about everything but those few days' absence; that was a sore that she +must not touch, a wound that could bear no probing. She had striven very +hard not to show when she didn't understand, taking her cues for assent +or dissent as he evidently wished her to, letting him think aloud, as it +seemed to be a relief to him, and saying little herself. The only time +when she broke in on her own account was when he had told her about +Cater, and the defective bars, and Leverich's ultimatum. Here was an +issue that she could comprehend; here her woman's instinct rang true. A +man may juggle with that fluctuating line where sharp practice and +honest shrewdness meet, so that he fails to see where one begins and +another ends; but a woman of Lois' caliber _knows_. Her "Justin, you +wouldn't do that; you wouldn't tell!" met with his quick response: "No, +I couldn't." + +"Oh, I know that, I know that! I'm glad, whatever comes, that you +couldn't do it. I'd rather be a hundred times poorer than we are! Aren't +you glad that you couldn't do it?" + +"No; I think I'm rather sorry," said Justin, with a half-smile. The +peculiar sharpness of the thought that it was between Cater and +Leverich--his friends, Heaven save the mark! that he was being pushed +toward ruin, had not lost any of its edge. + +There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater's mind toward +Justin--an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an +older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has +come along the same way. Cater's kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the +fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the +factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. + +Justin was surprised to find out how much the morning greeting with +Cater, or the occasional lunch-hour together, had meant to him. Cater +and he had mutually understood a great many things. Cater had done +nothing wrong now, except to pull the foothold from under his friend's +feet. It was not men who were known to be bad who hurt you when they +were dishonest; it was the _good_ men who slid over that dividing-line, +with apparent unconsciousness that they were on that other, shaming +side. To break an unwritten bond is perhaps worse than to break one +printed and scheduled, because it presupposes a greater faith and trust. +Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn't smile when he +thought of Cater--it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had +been his friend. + +"I am glad that you couldn't do it anyway!" said Lois. "It wouldn't have +been you if you had! Can't you take a rest now, dear, when _you_ look so +ill? No, no; I didn't mean that--of course you can't!" + +"A _rest!_" He rose and walked up and down the room. "Lois, do you know +that, in some way, I've got to get that money before the thirteenth? +Those days in Chicago--at the worst time! It makes me wild to think of +the time I've lost. I'm looking out for a partner who will buy out +Leverich and Martin, and we've got a chance yet--I'll swear we have! But +Lewiston's note has got to be paid first; then I can take time to +breathe. Harker saw a man from Boston from whom we might have borrowed +the money, if I had only been here. If we get that we can hold over; if +we don't we go to smash, and so does Lewiston. Lewiston _trusted_ me. +I've been to several places to-day to men that would be willing enough +to lend the money if they didn't know I needed it." + +"George Sutton?" hazarded Lois. + +Justin's lips curved bitterly. "Oh, he's a cur. He had some money +invested last year when he was sweet on Dosia, and drew it all out +afterwards! And, after all, I went to him to-day, like a fool!" + +"Can't you go to Eugene Larue?" + +"No. We talked about it once, but he fought shy; he didn't think the +security enough. If he thought so then, it would be worse than useless +now." + +"Mr. Girard?" + +"There's no use telling things to him, he hasn't any money." Justin +turned a dim eye on her. "I tell you, Lois, I haven't left a stone +unturned so far, that I could get at. If we could only sell the island! +Girard's looking it up for me; there may be a chance of that. There are +lots of chances to be thought out. I don't even know how we keep +running, but we do. Harker's a trump! If I can hold up my end, we'll be +all right." + +"Then go to bed now," said Lois, with a quick dread that gave her +courage. "And you must have something to eat first--and to drink, too. +Come, Justin! Do as I say." Her voice had a new firmness in it which he +unconsciously obeyed. She crept to her bed at last, aching in every +limb, but with her baby pressed close to her, her one darling comfort, +the source from which she drew a new love as the child drew its life +from her. It was the first time in all her married life that she had +borne the burden of her husband's care, a burden from which she must +seek no solace from him. Yet the thought of him was in itself +solace--her faith in him so strong that she simply knew he must succeed. +A king of men! If only he did not look so badly! + +She bent all her energies, these next days, to keeping him well fed, and +ordering everything minutely for his comfort when he came home, aided +and abetted by Dosia. The two women worked as with one thought between +them, as women can work, for the well-being of one they love, with fond +and minute care. Every detail, from the time he went away in the +morning, stooping slightly under the weight of something mysterious and +unseen, was ordered with reference to his homecoming at night--the +husband and father on whose strength all this helpless little family +hung for their own sustenance. The children were shown him at their +best, and whisked away the moment they got troublesome. + +Lois dressed herself in the colors he had liked. The cloth was laid +immaculately for dinner, although the maid had gone and had not been +replaced, and dainty dishes for him were concocted with delicate +care--the more care, that every penny had to be counted; when Justin +took out that lean pocket-book to give her money, Lois winced. If he +seemed to relish anything he ate, she and Dosia looked at each other +with covert triumph. + +Everything that was done for him had to be done covertly, it was found; +he disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes +he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost +heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the +doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and rest--a futile +prescription which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that +it was not rest that he needed, but money--money, money, the elixir of +life! He looked drawn and haggard and old, despite his nervous energy, +but a sufficient quantity of that magic metal would smooth out those +premature wrinkles, and round out those hollow checks, and give a +cheerful brightness to his eye, and take ten years from his age. + +Both women came to know the days when the prospects for selling the +island looked well or ill, with those telegrams of Girard's. Lois poured +out her heart about him to Dosia, her minute anxieties and fears. + +William came around several times to see Dosia--his visit almost +invariably followed by one from Mrs. Snow, to see if her William were +there. For the rest, there were few callers. + +It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could +see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an +invitation to take a ride in the doctor's motor, the doctor being a man +who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented +himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy +speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to +the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed +out of it. + +Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he +had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such +strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it +discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it +after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong +with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed +to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite +straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there +were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice-- Yet it +might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong--that +he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again +on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down, to get the +baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. +Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to +her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of +his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence. + +Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, +for fear of waking the baby, in his quest for a handkerchief in a +chiffonier drawer. After finding it, he stopped for a moment in front of +her, with that odd, arrested expression once more. + +"You don't mind my going out to-night and leaving you?" he murmured. +"The doctor ought to have asked _you_ to go instead; you need it more +than I." + +"Oh, no, no!" she hastened to reassure. "I don't mind at all, really!" +Her eyes gazed up at him limpidly clear, and emptied of self. "I have to +run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldn't go, no +matter how much I was asked to. I'm only glad that you will have the +distraction--you need it. I hope you'll have a lovely time." + +She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two +arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib. From across the hall +she could hear Redge and Zaidee prattling to each other from their beds +with an elfish glee that began to have long waits between its outbursts. + +In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little +discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her +tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and +straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of +mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a +tiny cloak in the half-gloom of her closet, when she heard her husband's +step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him +beside her. + +"What's the matter?" she asked, with quick premonition. + +"Nothing, nothing at all; we haven't started yet." He put one arm around +her, and with the other lifted her face up toward his. "I only came back +to tell you--"His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes +that were bent on hers. "I can't talk. I can't be as I ought to be, +Lois, until all this is over--but--I don't know what's getting into me +lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can't take my eyes off you! I +went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it +was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away +from my lovely wife."% + +Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than +our easily imagined bliss that we can only hide our eyes from it at +first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place +they were visited by angels. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE + + +Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an +absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she +could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately--the more +tired she was the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was +like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial +things became unnaturally distinct. So many wakeful nights had she +passed that one seemed to presuppose another, darkness brought, not a +sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there +staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher +had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her +something that it never brought. Lawson's death--Girard--Billy, who was +getting a little troublesome lately--the dear little brothers far away, +mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and +through her mind. Her heart was wrung for those two in the house, Justin +and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and +support Dosia; they had had their day. Prayer but wakened her further, +wandering off in desultory thought. If she could only sleep and forget! + +To-night she heard Justin's return from the automobile ride; apparently +the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added +to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard +came--he had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the +murmuring of the voices down-stairs--Girard's sent the blood leaping to +her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment +his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hers--her heart stopped +before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an +unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear +him, and that she could not. Why, oh why, had she gone to bed so early +to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a +disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing +and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could +imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, +smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a +few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its +chains. She couldn't get dressed and break in upon their intimate +conference--or it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably +go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no +longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there +desolately on the top step, "in her long night-gown, white as boughs of +May," with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands +clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching +and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into +large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to +listen--and to listen--and to listen. + +"I want to be there, too--I want to be there, too!" she whispered, with +quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. +"I want to be there, too. They're having it all--without me. And I want +to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they +didn't." They might have called her! All her passion, all her +philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had +only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have +dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer. + +After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, +and a little figure crept out--Zaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, +looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and +climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly +against Dosia's warm young shoulder. + +"They woke me up," she said placidly. "Did they woke you up, too, Cousin +Dosia?" + +"Yes," said Dosia, hugging the child close. Some spell was broken. + +Zaidee listened. "Papa and mamma talking down-stairs, oh, so-o-o-o +late!" Zaidee gave a little wriggle of delight; her eyes gleamed +winkingly. "Redge doesn't know, but I do! Who is that with papa and +mamma, Cousin Dosia? Oh, I know! it's the lovely man--that's what Redge +and me calls him. I wish I was down-stairs, don't you? Cousin Dosia, +don't you wish you were down-stairs?" + +"Yes," said Dosia again. "Hush! some one is coming; you'll get sent to +bed again." This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in +the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course. + +[Illustration: _Sat desolately on the top step_] + +"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said. "I thought I heard some one talking." +She rested on the post below, looking up. "I came to see if you'd take +Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give +Justin's room to Mr. Girard." + +"Is he going to stay?" asked Dosia. + +"Yes. It's too late for him to disturb the Snows, and he's been +traveling all day; he's dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa +down-stairs, but I wouldn't let him." She was carrying Zaidee, already +half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia's +bed, while Dosia followed her. + +"Did he sell the island?" asked Dosia. + +Lois shook her head. "No. They may really sell it next week, but not +now-- The woman who was surely going to buy it--she's withdrawn; she's +bought a steam-yacht instead. But Mr. Girard says he has hopes of +another purchaser next week. Only that will be too late to save the +business. Of course he doesn't know that, and Justin will not tell +him--he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from +that ride he looked so well, and now--" She covered her face with her +hands, before recovering herself. "It's time you were both asleep." + +"Can't I help you?" asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, +"No, it's not necessary," and went around making arrangements, while +Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last. + +It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had +breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, +who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the +vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, +imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen +in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that +made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girard's +glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to +greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand. + +"Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped." + +"It's half-past nine," said Dosia. + +"Half-past _nine!_" He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified +arraignment. "What do you mean?" His eye fell upon the clock, and +conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. "Heavens and +earth, why wasn't I called? On this morning of all others, when every +moment's of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked +early." + +"I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest," apologized +Dosia. + +"Needed the rest!" His tone was poignant; he looked outraged, but his +anger was entirely impersonal--there was in it even a sort of boyish +appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too. + +"You had better sit down and have some breakfast." + +"Oh, _breakfast!_" His gesture deprecated her evident intention. "Please +don't. Thank you very much, but I don't want any breakfast; I only want +to get to town." + +"There isn't any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit +down and eat," said Dosia firmly. "Come out to this little table on the +piazza." She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with +the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him +sternly. "Do you take coffee?" + +"Please don't, please don't cook me anything! I'd hate to trouble you." +He seemed so distressed that she relented a little. + +"A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you'll _have_ to take that." + +"Very well--if I must. Can't I get the things myself?" + +"No." She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her +heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a +glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down +herself by the table afterwards as he ate and drank. He gave her a +sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her +cheeks. + +"I'm not used to this," he said simply. "What is that dress you have +on--silk?" + +"No, it's cotton; do you like it?" + +"_Very_ much. Oh, please don't get up--Zaidee wasn't calling you. I +won't eat another mouthful unless you stay just where you are--please!" + +"Well!" said Dosia, with laughing pleasure. + +"Besides, I've been wanting to consult you about the Alexanders," he +went on, leaning across the table toward her, intimately. "It's so +beautiful to me to see them together that to feel that they're in +trouble distresses me beyond words. You're so near to them both I +thought that perhaps---- Do you know anything about the real state of +Mr. Alexander's affairs?" + +Dosia shook her head. "No; only that he is very much worried over them." + +"He wanted to sell the island; he sent me off on that business lately. +He'll sell it some time, of course, but I don't know how complicating +the delay is. He's the kind of man you can't ask; you have to wait until +he tells you. You can't _make_ a person have confidence in you. Won't +you please have some of these strawberries with me? Do!" + +"No; you must eat them _all_," said Dosia, with charming authority, her +arms before her on the table, elbow-sleeved, white and dimpled, as she +regarded him. He seemed to take up all the corner, against the +background of the green honeysuckle in the fresh morning light. With +that smile upon his face, he seemed extraordinarily masculine and +absorbing, yet appealing, too, inviting of confidence. + +Dosia felt carried out of herself by a sudden heady resolution--or, +rather, not a new resolution, but one that she had had in mind for a +long, long time, before, oh, before she had even known who this man was. +She had planned over and over again how she was to say those words, and +now the time had come. She could not sit here with him in this new, +sweet friendliness without saying them. She had imagined the scene in so +many different ways! When she had gone over it by herself, her cheeks +had flushed, her eyes had shone with the tears in them; the words as she +spoke them had gone deeply, convincingly, from heart to heart--or +perhaps, in an assumed, tremulous lightness, the meaning in her impulse +had shown all the clearer to one who understood. For a year and a half +the uttered thought had been the climax to which her dreams had led; it +would have seemed a monstrous, impossible thing that it had not been +reached before. + +She began now in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all +warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent +dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and +conscious in real life. + +"I want to thank you for being so kind to me the night of that accident +on the train coming up from the South." Poor Dosia instantly felt +committed to a mistake. Her eyes fell for a moment on his hand, as it +lay upon the table, with a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers +had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once +pillowed her cheek upon it, and knew that he had seen the look; she +continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality: +"I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for +not thanking you before." + +The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him as if in remembrance +of something that hurt. "Oh, pray don't mention it," he said, with a +formality that matched hers. "It was nothing but what anyone would have +done--little enough, anyway." + +What happened afterwards she did not know, except that in a few minutes +he had gone. + +She watched him go off down the path with that swift, long, easy step; +watched till the last vestige of the gray suit was out of sight--he had +a fashion of wearing gray!--before clearing off the table. Then she went +and sat on the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with +the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet. Justin was fond of +flowers. + +Much has been written about the power of the mind to reproduce minute +details of a scene that has served as the setting for some great +emotion; the pattern of a table-cover or a rug, the flowers in a vase, +the titles of the books, the strain of music being played in the next +room--all stand out, separate and distinct, indelibly imprinted upon the +memory. There is another variety of the same phenomena, seldom commented +on, where an entirely unreal impression of the scene as a whole is left +on the mind by one or two details. To Dosia, sitting there by the little +plot of tulips, the sun was the brilliant sun of July, and those scarlet +tulips a garden wide and far-reaching, an endless vista of flowers, the +blue sky an endless vault above her--high noon and midsummer, with that +sweet-scented warmth at the busy heart of things, a circle of infinite +life humming in the low grasses, in the almost windless, hardly stirring +air. Warmth and color and life, at high noon, listening close to the +heart of things. + +And Dosia! She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man +until he had shown that he cared for her--it was the unmaidenly, +impossible thing. And now--how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful +smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men +suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself +made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more +in her whole life, she had this--even if she never had anything more. +Yet what had she? Nothing and less than nothing. If he had ever thought +of her, if he had ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand +trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had +been a sign and a symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him +alone--if in some way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once +been his, it had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and +yet--so unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her +attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which +he might never give way, but it was unalterably there--as it was +unalterably there with her. All that year at home, when she believed she +had not been thinking of him, she really had been thinking of him. We +learn to know each other sometimes in long absences. She began to +perceive in him now a humility and a pride strangely at variance with +each other, and both equally at variance with the bright assurance of +his outer manner. He gave to everyone; he would work early and late for +others, in his yearning sympathy and affection: yet he himself, from the +very intenseness of his desire for it, stood aloof, and drew back from +the insistence of any claim for himself. They might meet a hundred times +and grow no closer; they might grow farther and farther away. + +Dosia felt that other women must have loved him--how could they have +helped it? She had a pang of sorrow for them--for herself it made no +difference. If she had pain for all her life afterwards, she was glad at +this moment that he was worthy to be loved; she need never be ashamed of +loving him--he was "good." The word seemed to contain some beautiful +comfort and uplifting. No matter what experience he had passed through +in his struggle with the world, he had held some simple, honorable, +_clean_ quality intact. The Dosia who must always have some heart-warm +dream to live by had it now; for all her life she could love him, pray +for him. She had always thought that to love was to be happy; now she +was to love and be unhappy--yet she would not have it otherwise. + +So slight, so young, so lightly dealt with, Dosia had the pathetically +clear insight and the power that comes to those who see, not themselves +alone, their own desires and hopes, but the universe in which they +stand, and view their acts and thoughts in relation to it. She must see +Truth, "and be glad, even if it hurt." + +The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed in it. Whether +she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness and days of heartache +afterwards, this joy of loving was enough for her to-day--the joy of +loving him. She saw, in that lovely, brooding thought of him, what that +first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in with it her +knowledge of him now, to make the real man far more imperfect, though +far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved her as she loved him, part of that for +which she had always sought love would have to be foregone--she could +never come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and pour out to +him all those hopes and fears, those struggles and mistakes and trials +and indignities, the shame and the penitence that had been hers. She +could never talk of Lawson--her past must be forever unshriven and +uncomforted. Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she +could bare her heart in confession; these were the things that touched +him on the raw. He "hated the sound of Lawson's name." How many times +had George Sutton's face blotted out hers? If he knew _that_! She must +forever be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that _she_ +could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that it never can be +truly one with the beloved, touched her with its sadness, and then +slipped away in the thought of him now--not just the man who was to help +and protect her with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. +His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his forehead---- +She thought of him with the fond dream-passion of the maiden, that is +often the shyest thing on earth, ready to veil itself and turn and elude +and hide at the first chance that it may be revealed. + +"Dosia! Dosia, where are you?" + +Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the sky had grown +gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the trouble, all the stress of the +world, seemed to encompass her with that tone in the voice of Lois. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX + + +"Justin has come home ill, he was taken with a chill as soon as he got +to town; he drove back in a carriage from the station. I want you to +telephone for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can." +Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up +the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one +who mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what +may be happening. "And, Dosia!" she arrested the girl as she was +disappearing, "I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what +we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the +children. They're in the nursery now, but I'll send them down; they had +better play outdoors, where he won't hear them." + +"Oh, yes, yes; I'll attend to everything," affirmed Dosia hurriedly, +while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home +because he is not well argues at once the most serious need for the act. +It is the public crossing of the danger zone. + +With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of +something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of +Justin's illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness +of her eyes, in the fullness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement +of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery +force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke +of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the +commonplace surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only +Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken +eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to +make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would +go off together--anything to make him forget, even though the effort +left her breathless afterwards. When she went out of the room and came +back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been, +with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on +the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the +more quickly to go down-town again if the doctor "fixed him up," though +now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones. + +There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which +might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr. +Angevin L. Cater. + +"I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and +as I had to come out this way on business, I thought I'd just drop in +and see if there was anything I could do for him in town," he stated to +Dosia. + +"I'll find out," said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word +that Justin would like to see the visitor. + +Cater himself had grown extraordinarily lean and yellow. The fact that +his clothes were new and of a fashionable cut seemed only to make him +the more grotesque. He looked oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile +of greeting appeared to have shrunk also--something had gone out of it. + +"Well, Cater, you find me down," said Justin, with glittering, cold +cheerfulness. + +"I hope not for long," said the visitor. + +"Oh, no; but, when I get up, you won't see me going past much longer; +I'll soon be out of the old place. I guess the game is up, as far as I'm +concerned. Your end is ahead." + +"Mr. Alexander," began Cater, clearing his throat and bending earnestly +toward Justin, who, with the folds of his blue dressing-gown around him, +had the unnatural surroundings of the flowered-chintz-covered bedroom +furniture, and Lois' swinging-glassed, mahogany dressing-table with its +silver appointments. The room had already the cleared-up neatness with +which one prepares for illness, with everything irrelevant put away. A +cluster of white tulips was in a thin glass vase on the mantel; the +shades were drawn to an inch, so that an unglaring yet dimly cheerful +light came through them; on the little mahogany stand by Cater there was +a glass of water and a watch, ticking face upward. Cater's elbow jostled +into the light table as he turned, and he steadied it before bracing +himself to go on. "I hope you ain't going to hold it up against me that +I had to make a different business deal from what we proposed; I've been +thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasn't any written agreement, +you know." + +"No, there was no written agreement," assented Justin; "there was +nothing to bind you." + +"That's what I said to myself. If there had been, I'd 'a' stuck to it, +of course. But a man's got to do the best he can for himself in this +world." + +"Has he?" asked the sick man, with an enigmatic questioning smile. + +"I'd be mighty sorry to have anything come between us. I reckon I took a +shine to you the first day I met up with you," continued Cater +helplessly. "I'd be mighty sorry to think we weren't friends." + +Justin's brilliant eyes surveyed him serenely. Something sadly humorous, +yet noble and imposing, seemed to emanate from his presence, weak and a +failure though he was. "I can be friends with you, but you can't be +friends with me, Cater; it isn't in you to know how," he said. +"Good-by." + +"Well, good-by," said the other, rising, his long, angular figure +knocking awkwardly against chairs and tables as he went out, leaving +Justin lying there alone, with his head throbbing horribly. Yet, +strangely enough, in spite of it, his mind felt luminously clear, in +that a certain power seemed to have come to him--a power of correlating +all the events of the past eighteen months and placing them in their +relative sequence. A certain faith--the candid, boyish, unquestioning +faith in the adequacy of his knowledge of those whom he had called his +friends--was gone; the face of Leverich came to him, brutal in its +unveiled cupidity, showing what other men felt but concealed, yet his +own faith in honor and honesty remained, stronger and higher than ever +before. Nothing, he knew, could take it from him; it was a faith that he +had won from the battle with his own soul. If other so-called material +things had to go, then they had to--he couldn't pay the price, for one! +He saw now that he had been foredoomed from the start. Men who ventured +on a capital controlled by others, hadn't any chance of free movement. + +By to-morrow night that note of Lewiston's would be protested, and +then--the burning pain of failure gripped him in its racking clutches +once more, though he strove to fight it off. He would have to get well +quickly, so as to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to +get bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were successful +were sought for, but men of his age who were not had a pretty hard row +to hoe. + +Lois was long gone--probably she was with the baby. He missed his +handkerchief, and rose and went over, with a swaying unsteadiness, to +his chiffonier drawer in the farther corner to get one. A pistol lying +there in its leather case, as it had done any time this five years, for +a reserve protection against burglars, caught his eyes. He took it out +of its case, examining the little weapon carefully, with his finger on +the trigger, half cocking it, to see if it needed oil. It was a pretty +little toy. Suddenly, as he held it there, leaning against the +chiffonier, his thin white face with its deep black shadows under the +eyes reflected by the high, narrow glass, the four walls faded away from +him, with their familiar objects; his face gleamed whiter and whiter; +the shadows grew blacker; only his eyes stared---- + +A room, noticed once a year and a half ago, came before him now with a +creeping, all-possessing distinctness--that loathsome, dreadful room +(long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of +horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his +career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. +He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp, +mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which +he was drawn--drawn a little nearer and a little nearer; the thing in +his hand--did it move itself? Cold to his touch it moved---- + +The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, glided up to him. +She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; her lips refused to speak. + +"Why, you needn't have been afraid, dear," he said at once, looking at +her with a gentle surprise. "I'm not a coward, to go and leave you +_that_ way. You need never be afraid of that, Lois." + +"No," said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what +made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had +suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justin--what +strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her +there. + +She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his wants and +getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, and then knelt down +beside him where he lay, putting her arms around him. + +"You oughtn't to be doing this for me; I ought to be taking care of +_you_," he said, with a tender self-reproach that seemed to come from a +new, hitherto unknown Justin, who watched her face to see if it showed +fatigue, and counted the steps she took for him. + +The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and came again later. +The last time he looked grave, ordered complete quiet, and left +sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought on by overwork, had evidently +taken a disregarded hold some time before, and must be reckoned with +now. What Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all +things, freedom from care. Freedom from care! + +Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. An impression of +Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room +where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he +dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar +poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it +made one honorable to serve him. + +The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when +Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois' +room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At +Dosia's entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she +was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately +as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied criticism: + +"I don't care what you say--I don't care what anybody says. I can't +stand it any longer, when it's _killing_ him! He _can't_ rest unless he +has that money. Am I to just sit down and let my husband die, when he's +in such trouble as this? Is _that_ all I can do? Why, whose trouble is +it? Mine as well as his! If it's his responsibility, it's mine, +too--mine as well as his!" + +She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the table, and was +unconscious that it bled. "If there's nobody else to get that money for +him, _I'll_ rise up and get it. He's stood alone long enough--long +enough! He says there is no help left, but he forgets that there's his +wife!" + +"Oh, Lois," said Dosia, half weeping. "Oh, Lois, what can _you_ do? +There, you've waked the baby--he's crying." + +"Get me the waist to this skirt and my walking-jacket. No, give me the +baby first; he's hungry." + +She spoke collectedly, bending over the child as she held him to her, +and straightening the folds of the little garments. "There, there, dear +little heart, dear little heart, mother's comfort--oh, my comfort, my +blessing! Get my things out of the closet now, Dosia, and my gloves from +that drawer, the top one. Oh, and bring me baby's cloak and cap, too. I +forgot that I couldn't leave him. I must take him with me." She had sunk +her voice to a low murmur, so as not to disturb the child. + +"Where are you going?" asked Dosia. + +"To Eugene Larue." + +"Mr. Larue!" + +"Yes. He'll let me have the money--he'll understand. He wouldn't let +Justin have it, but he'll give it to me--if I'm not too proud to ask for +it; and I'm not too proud." She spoke in a tone the more thrilling for +its enforced calm. "There are things a man will do for a woman, when he +won't for a man because then he has to be businesslike; but he doesn't +have to be businesslike to a woman--he can lend to her just because she +needs it." + +"Lois!" + +"Oh, there's many a woman--like me--who always knows, even though she +never acts on the knowledge, that there is some man she could go to for +help, and get it, just because she was _herself_--a woman and in +trouble--just for that! Dosia, if I go to Eugene Larue myself in +trouble--_such_ trouble----" + +"But he's out at Collingswood!" said Dosia, bewildered. + +"Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, it connects at +Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an hour to get to the place; +I've looked it up in the time-table. I'll be back here again by ten +o'clock. I----" She stopped with a sudden intense motion of listening, +then put the child from her and ran across the hall to the opposite +room. + +When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: "Justin's gone to +sleep now. The doctor says he will be under the influence of the +anodynes until morning. Mrs. Bently is in there--I sent for her; she +says she'll stay until I get back." Mrs. Bently was a woman of the +plainer class, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. "If the +children wake up they won't be afraid with her; but you'll be here, +anyway." + +"Leave the baby with me," implored Dosia. + +"No, I can't--suppose I were detained? _Then_ I'd go crazy! He won't be +any bother, he's so little and so light." + +"Very well, then; I'll go, too," stated Dosia in desperation. "I am not +needed here. You must have some one with you if you have baby! Let me +go, Lois! You _must!_" + +"Oh, very well, if you like," responded Lois indifferently. But that the +suggestion was an unconscious relief to her she showed the next moment, +as she gave some directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries and some +biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the baby if it +grew chilly. + +The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be lighted and the gas +turned down, and the new maid impressed with the fact that they would be +back at a little after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After +Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin as he slept--his +head thrown forward a little on the pillow, his right hand clasped, and +his knees bent as one supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois +stooped over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who +sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit. + +Then the two women walked down the street toward the station, Lois +absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia distracted, confused, half +assenting and half dissenting to the expedition. + +"Are you sure Mr. Larue will be at Collingswood?" she asked anxiously. + +"Justin saw him Saturday. He said he was going out there then for the +summer." + +So far it would be all right, then. They had passed the Snows' house, +and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of life there; she hesitated, and +then went on. As they got beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked +back, and saw Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza. + +"I'll catch up to you in a moment," she said to Lois, and ran back +quickly. + +"Miss Bertha!" + +"Why, Dosia, my dear, I didn't see you; don't speak loud!" Miss Bertha's +face, her whispering lips, her hands, were trembling with excitement. +"We've been under quite a strain, but it's all over now--I'm sure I can +tell _you_. Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr. +Sutton has just proposed to Ada--in the sitting-room. We left them the +parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. Mother's white shawl is in +there, and I haven't been able to get it." + +"Oh!" said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance of the fact. +"Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be in later?" + +"No, not until to-morrow night," said Miss Bertha as blankly, but Dosia +had already gone on. She did not know whether she were relieved or sorry +that Girard was not there. She did not know what she had meant to say to +him, but it had seemed as if she _must_ see him. She caught up to Lois +and the baby in a few steps, and drew back into the station as Billy +passed it. She had felt anxiously as if some one ought to know where +they were going, but not Billy--Billy, who was always now either too +melancholy or too joyous, as she rebuffed or relented. + +Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit seemed to be +wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as the darkness that was +gathering around them. Only, when they were at last in the train, she +threw back her veil and smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief +in the smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost +roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness of heart to Dosia. + +"He will lend me the money," said Lois, with a grateful, touching +confidence that seemed to shut out every conventional, every worldly +suggestion, and to breathe only of her need and the willingness of a +friend to help--not alone for the need's sake, but for hers. + +Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see him; his bearded +lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, piercing eyes, were not +attractive to her. The whole thing was very bewildering. + +It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, where they changed +cars for the little branch road that went past Collingswood--a signal +station, as the conductor who punched their tickets impressed on Lois. +Haledon itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of people on +the platform continually coming and going under the electric lights. As +Lois and Dosia waited for their train, an automobile dashed up, and a +man and a woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took their +place among those who were waiting for the westbound express. The woman, +large and elegantly gowned, had something familiar in her outline as she +turned to her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair +mustache--the man who lately had been seen everywhere with Mrs. +Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia shrank back into the shadow. +The light struck full athwart the large, full-blown face of Myra as she +turned to the man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly +cognizant, smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar between his +teeth. + +Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shame--she had seen something +that should have been hidden in darkness. They were going off together. +All those whispers about Mrs. Leverich had been true. + +There were only a few people in the shaky, rattling little car when Lois +and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road +with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on +the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor +of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in +his long cloak, slept all the way. It was but seven miles to +Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the +journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station +with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the +ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran after him. + +"Mr. Larue's place is near here, isn't it?" she called. + +"Yes, over there to the right," said the youth, pointing down the board +walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, "about a quarter of a mile down. +You'll know when you come to the gates. They're big iron ones." + +"Isn't there any way of riding?" + +"I guess not," said the youth, and disappeared into the woods on a +bicycle. + +"Oh, it will be only a step," said Lois, starting off in the direction +indicated, followed perforce by Dosia with the hand-bag, both walking in +silence. + +The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact daylight +possibility, had been growing gradually a thing of the dark, unknown, +fantastic. A faint remnant of the fading light remained in the west, +vanishing as they looked at it. Above the treetops a pale moon hung +high; there seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that +iron track curved out of sight. + +The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with that strangely +eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big iron gates were reached at +last, showing a long winding drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue +had built a house for his bride, living in it these summers when she was +away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess tacitly before the +world that he was unable to make his wife care for him--a darkened, +desolate, lonely life, as dark and as desolate as this house seemed now. +An undefined dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently: + +"The walk has not really been very long. We'll probably drive back. It's +odd that there are no lights, but perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah, +there's a light!" + +Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung on the cornice +above--it was the moon and not a lamp that had made it. They ascended +the piazza steps; there was no one there. + +"There is a knocker at the front door," said Lois. She pounded, and the +noise vibrated terrifyingly through the stillness. At the same instant a +scraping on the gravel walk behind them made them turn. It was the boy +on the bicycle, who, having sped back to them, was wheeling around at +the moment that he might lose no impetus in retracing his way, while he +leaned over to call: + +"Mr. Larue ain't there. The woman who closed up the house told me he had +a cable from his wife, and he sailed for Europe this afternoon. She +says, do you want the key?" + +"No," said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared. + +"I wish he had waited until we could have asked him some questions," +said Dosia, vexed. "Don't let's stay here; it's too dark and too +dreadfully lonely under these trees. We had better get back to the +station and wait for the train." + +"I suppose so," said Lois drearily. This, then, was the end of her +exaltation--for this she had passionately nerved herself! There was to +be neither the warmth of instant comprehension of her errand, nor the +frank giving of aid when necessity had been pleaded; there was nothing. +She shifted the baby over to the other shoulder, and they retraced their +way, which now seemed familiar and short. There was, at any rate, a +light on a tall pole in front of the little station, although the +station itself was deserted; they seated themselves on the bench under +it to wait. The train was not scheduled for nearly an hour yet. The +watch that Lois carried showed that it was a quarter to nine. + +"Oh, if I could only fly back!" she groaned. "I don't see how I can +wait--I don't see how I can wait! Oh, why did I come?" + +"Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of," said Dosia, with +the terribly self-accusing feeling now that she ought to have prevented +the expedition at the beginning. She got up to go into the little box of +a house, in search of a time-table. As she passed the tall post that +held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper, and read aloud the words +written on it below the date: + + NOTICE + + NO TRAINS WILL RUN ON THIS ROAD TO-NIGHT + AFTER 8.30 P.M., ON ACCOUNT OF REPAIRS + +Dosia and Lois looked at each other with the blankness of despair--the +frantic, forlornly heroic impulse, uncalculating of circumstances, began +to show itself in all its piteous woman-folly. + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN + + +Only fifty miles from a great city, the little station seemed like the +typical lodge in a wilderness; as far as one could see up or down the +track, on either side were wooded hills. A vast silence seemed to be +gathering from unseen fastnesses, to halt in this spot. + +There were no houses and no light to be seen anywhere, except that one +swinging on the pole above, and the moon which was just rising. It was, +in fact, one of those places which consist of the far, back-lying acres +of the great country-owners, and which seem to the casual traveler +forgotten or unknown in their extent and apparently primitive condition. +The other railroad, six or seven miles away, went past the country towns +and the facaded mansions and the conventional horticultural grounds of +the possessors of these uncultivated tracts of woodland. + +To the women sitting on the bench, wrapped around by the loneliness and +the intense stillness of the oncoming night, the whole expedition +appeared at last unveiled in all its grim betrayal. While Lois had been +exaltedly imaginative, had resolved so desperately, had acted so +daringly, there had never been, from the inception of the scheme, any +chance that it could succeed. For the first time since Lois had left +home, a wild seething anxiety for Justin possessed her. How could she +have left him? She must go back to him at once! + +"Oh, Dosia, we must get home again; we must get home!" she cried, +starting up so vehemently that the baby in her arms screamed, startled, +and Lois walked up and down distractedly hushing him, and then, as he +still wailed, sat down once more and bared her white bosom to quiet him, +talking the while in a low tone: "We will have to get back; Dosia, we +must start at once." + +"We will have to walk to Haledon," said Dosia. + +"Yes, yes. Perhaps we may come to some farmhouse where they will let us +have a wagon, or one may pass us on the way and give us a lift. It is +seven miles to Haledon--that isn't very far! I often walked five miles +with Justin before I was married, and a mile or two more is nothing. +There are plenty of trains from Haledon." + +"Oh, we can do it easily enough," said Dosia, though her heart was as +lead within her breast. "You had better eat some of these biscuits +before we start," she advised, taking them out of the bag; and Lois +munched them obediently, and drank some tepid water from a pitcher which +Dosia had found inside. As she put it back again in its place, she +slipped to the side of the platform and looked down the moon-filled +narrow valley. + +Through all this journey Dosia had carried double thoughts; her voice +called where none might hear. It spoke to far distances now as she +whispered, with hands outspread: + +"Oh, _why_ weren't you in when I went for you? Why didn't you come and +take care of us, when I needed you so much? Why did you let us go off +this way? You might have known! Why _don't_ you come and take care of +us? There's no one to take care of us but you! _You_ could!" A dry sob +stopped the words--the deep, inherent cry of womankind to man for help, +for succor. She stooped over and picked up an oak-leaf that had lain on +the ground since the winter, and pressed it to her bosom, and sent it +fluttering off on a gust of wind down the incline, as if it could indeed +take her message with it, before she went back to Lois. + +After some hesitation as to the path,--one led across the rails from +where they were sitting,--they finally took that behind the station, +which broadened out into a road that lay along the wooded slope above, +from which they could look down at intervals and see the track below. +One side of that road was bordered by a high wire fencing inclosing +pieces of woodland, sometimes so thick as to be impenetrable, while +along other stretches there would be glimpsed through the trees some +farther open field. To the right toward the railway, there were only +woods and no fencing. + +The two walked off briskly at first, but the road was of a heavy, loose, +shelving soil in which the foot sank at each step; the grass at the edge +was wet with dew and intersected by the ridged, branching roots of +trees; the pace grew, perforce, slower and slower still. They took turns +in carrying the baby, whose small bundled form began to seem as if +weighted with lead. + +Far over on what must have been the other side of the track, they +occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a +little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong +bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they +came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with +fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they +pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of passing any +given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could +never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and +trees. Trees! They became nightmarishly oppressive in those dark, solemn +ranks and groups--those silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath +them; terror lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the trees, +away into the open, with only the clear sky overhead! If that road to +the house of Eugene Larue had seemed a part of infinity in the dimness +of the unknown, what was this? + +They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosia's voice coaxing and +cheering, and then got up to shake the earth out of their shoes and +struggle on once more--bending, shivering, leaning against each other +for support; two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection with +other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the universe, as women do +toil, apparently futile of result. + +Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, +clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot by--a cheerful +monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation +behind it. Why hadn't they seen it before? Why hadn't they tried to hail +it when they _did_ see? To have had such a chance and lost it! It seemed +to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent thought. Once they were +frightened almost uncontrollably by a group of men approaching with +strange sounds--a group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible +when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering, +two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there were +more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and +trees--and trees-- + +"Do you suppose we'll _ever_ get out of here?" asked Lois at last, +dully. + +"Why, of course; we can't help getting out, if we keep on," said Dosia, +in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone. + +It was she who was helper and guide now. + +"Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do +you think we have walked, Dosia?" + +"It seems so endless, I can't tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon," +said Dosia. "Let's sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois +_dear_!" She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp grass +for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the +older woman's head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child +in her young arms. "Oh, Lois, Lois!" + +Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came +the murmur of the brook they had passed in the train--so long since, it +seemed! The moon hung higher above now, pouring a flood of light down +through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with +its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something +in the utter relaxation of the attitude and manner began to alarm the +girl. + +"Lois, we must go on," she said, with an anxious note in her voice. +"Lois! You _mustn't_ give up. We can't stay here!" + +"Yes, I know," said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk +ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the +shadow-embroidered road over which they had just passed. + +"Oh, why _don't_ you come!" she whispered again intensely, with +passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up to Lois, took the +child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the +accompaniment of that far-off brook. + +The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, the walls of +trees darker, closer together, though the soil under foot grew firmer. +They had to stop every few minutes to rest. Lois saw ever before her the +one objective point--a dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out +upon the bed, dying, while she could not get there. Hope was crushed +out. Death and ruin--that was the end. + +The end! There are paths one walks along in life that seem only to end +in the barrier of a stone wall, with "No thoroughfare" written on it; +there is no way beyond. Yet, when one gets close to that insurmountable, +impenetrable barrier, how often there is seen to be some hitherto +unnoticed aperture, some little postern-gate by which one can pass on +into the highroad! + +"Hark!" said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound of a voice +trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came nearer, while the women stood +terrified. The thing they had both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the +moonlight brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with a +bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future could compare +with this one, that neared them with the seconds, swaying unsteadily +from side to side of the road, as the tipsy voice alternately muttered +and roared the reiterated words: + + "For I have come from Pad-dy land, + The land--I do adore!" + +They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he +passed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seen--a blotched, +dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own. +They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a +tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly +near--the pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one saw it through +the lights and shadows under the trees, capless and coatless, with +sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the elbows, and head held forward. +Suddenly the pace slackened, stopped. + +"Great _heavens_!" said the voice of Bailey Girard. + +"Oh, it's you, it's you!" cried Dosia, running to him with an ineffable, +revealing gesture, a lovely motion of her upflinging arms, a passion of +joy in the face upraised to his, that called forth an instantly +flashing, all-embracing light in his. + +In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each of an intimacy that +went back of all words, back of all action. The arms that upheld her +gripped her close to him as one who defends his own as he said tensely: + +"That beast ahead, did he touch you?" + +"Oh, no; he didn't see us. We hid!" She tried to explain in hurrying, +disconnected sentences. "I've been longing and _praying_ for you to +come! I tried to let you know before we started, and you weren't there. +Lois was half crazy about Justin. Come to her now! She wanted to see Mr. +Larue, and he was gone. We've walked from Collingswood; we have the baby +with us." + +"The _baby_!" + +"Yes; she couldn't leave him behind. Oh, it's been so terrible! If you +had only known!" + +"Oh, why didn't I?" he groaned. "I ought to have known--I _ought_ to +have known! I was in that motor that must have passed you; it was just a +chance that I got out to walk." They had reached the place where Lois +sat, and he bent over her tenderly. She smiled into his anxious eyes, +though her poor face was sunken and wan. + +"I'm glad it's you," she whispered. "You'll help me to get home!" + +"Dear Mrs. Alexander! I want to help you to more than that. I want you +to tell me everything." He pressed her hand, and stood looking +irresolutely down the road. + +"I could go to Haledon, and send back a carriage for you; it's three +miles further on." + +"No, no, no! Don't leave us!" the accents came in terror from both. "We +can walk with you. Only don't leave us!" + +"Very well; we'll try it, then." + +He took the warm bundle that was the sleeping child from Lois, saying, +as she half demurred, "It's all right; I've carried 'em in the +Spanish-American War in Cuba," holding it in one arm, while with the +other he supported Lois. The dragging march began again, Dosia, +stumbling sometimes, trying to keep alongside of him, so that when he +turned his head anxiously to look for her she would be there, to meet +his eyes with hers, bravely scorning fatigue. + +The trees had disappeared now from the side of the road; long, swelling, +wild fields lay on the slopes of the hillside, broken only by solitary +clumps of bushes--fields deserted of life, broad resting-places for the +moonlight, which illumined the farthest edge of the scene, although the +moon itself was hidden by the crest of a hill. And as they went on, +slowly perforce, he questioned Lois gently; and she, with simple words, +gradually laid the facts bare. + +"Oh, why didn't Alexander tell me all this?" he asked pitifully, and she +answered: + +"He said it was no use; he said you had no money." + +"No; but I can sometimes get it for other people! I could have gone to +Rondell Brothers and got it." + +"Rondell Brothers? I thought they were difficult to approach." + +"That depends. I was with Rondell's boy in Cuba when he had the fever, +and he's always said--but that's neither here nor there. Apart from +that, they've had their eye on your husband lately. You can't hide the +quality of a man like him, Mrs. Alexander; it shows in a hundred ways +that he doesn't think of. They have had dealings with him, though he +doesn't know it--it's been through agents. Mr. Warren, one of their best +men, has, it seems, taken a fancy to him. I shouldn't wonder if they'd +take over the typometer as it stands, and work Alexander in with it. If +Rondell Brothers really take up anyone----!" Girard did not need to +finish. + +Even Lois and Dosia had heard of Rondell Brothers, the great firm that +was known from one end of the country to the other--a commercial house +whose standing was as firm, as unquestioned, as the Bank of England, and +almost as conservative. Apart from this, its reputation was unique. The +house was more than a commercial establishment: it was an institution, +in which for three generations the firm known as Rondell Brothers had +carried on, in the conduct of their business--and carried to high +advantage--the principles of personal honor and honesty and fair +dealing. + +No boy or man of good character, intelligence, and industry was ever +connected with Rondell's without its making for his advancement; to get +a position there was to be assured of his future. Their young men stayed +with them, and rose steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from +them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young +firms whom Rondell Brothers had started and made, and whose profit also +afterwards profited them, were more than had ever been counted. They +were never deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their +own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they +exacted the same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other +guaranty than the name of Rondell. + +If Rondell Brothers took Justin's affairs in hand! Lois felt a hope that +sent life through her veins. + +"Oh, let us hurry home!" she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace, +though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while +Dosia slipped a little behind, still trying to keep her place by his +side, so that she might meet his look when he turned to her. + +"You're so tired," he whispered, with a break in his voice, "and I can't +help you!" and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with +her comforting "No, no, no! I'm not really tired"; her voice thrilled +with life, though her feet stumbled. + +In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far +solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, +they two were so heart-close--so heavenly, so fulfillingly near! + +Once he whispered in a yearning distress, "Why are you crying?" And she +answered through those welling tears: + +"I'm only crying because I'm so glad you're here!" + +After a while there was a sound of wheels--wheels! Only a sulky, it +proved to be--a mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a +trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the +turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it. + +"You'll have to take another passenger," he said, after explaining +matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the +farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six +inches allotted to her. + +She held out her arms hastily. "My boy!" she said, but it was a voice +that had hope in it once more. + +"Oh, yes, I forgot; here's the baby," said Girard, looking curiously at +the bundle before handing it to her. "We'll meet you at the Haledon +station very soon now; my friends will have left my hat and coat there +for me." + +In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a +bend of the road. + +So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook +again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those +far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was +like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern +and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the +roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, +of absorbing all the life of the scene. + +Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the +first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that +moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the +world from him. + +The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone: + +"Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your shoes before we go +on; they're full of earth." + +She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him while he knelt down +and loosened the bows, and took off the little clumpy low shoes, shaking +them out carefully, and then put them on once more, retying the bows +neatly with long, slowly accomplishing fingers. + +"They'll get full of earth again," she protested, her voice half lost in +the silence. + +"Then I'll take them off and shake them out over again." + +He stood up, brushing the sand from his palms, smiling down at her as +she stood up also. "I've always dreamed of doing that," he said simply. +"I've dreamed of taking you in my arms and carrying you off through the +night--as I couldn't that first time! I've longed so to do it. There +have been times when I couldn't _stand_ it to see you, because you +weren't mine." Then--her hands were in his, his dear, protecting hands, +the hands she loved, with their thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming +as well as giving. + +"Oh--_Dosia!_" he said below his breath. + +As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all that had hurt +love rose up between them, and passed away, forgiven. She foresaw a time +when all her life before he came into it would have dropped out of +remembrance as a tale that is told. And now---- + +It seemed that he was going to be a very splendid lover! + + + + +CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT + + +The summer was nearly at an end--a summer that had brought +rehabilitation to the Typometer Company, yet rehabilitation of a certain +kind, under strict rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally the +same thing, the typometer was now but one factor of trade among a dozen +other patented inventions under the control of Rondell Brothers. + +If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet in Justin's +relation to the business which had seemed so inspiringly his own, there +was a larger relation to greater interests, a wider field, a greater +sense of security, and a sense of justice in the change; he felt that he +had much to learn. There was something in him that could not profit +where other men profited--that could not take advantage when that +advantage meant loss to another. He was not great enough alone to +reconcile the narrowing factors of trade with that warring law within +him. The stumbling of Cater would have been another stumbling-block if +it had not been that one; that for which Leverich, with Martin always +behind him, had chosen Justin first had been the very thing that had +fought against them. + +[Illustration: _He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into +the room_] + +The summer was far spent. Justin had been working hard. It was long +after midnight. Lois slept, but Justin could not; he rose and went into +the adjoining room, and sat down by the open window. The night had been +very close, but now a faint breath stirred from somewhere out of the +darkness. It was just before the dawn--Justin looked out into a gloom in +which the darkness of trees wavered uncertainly and brought with it a +vague remembrance. He had done all this before. When? Suddenly he +recollected the night he had sat at this same window, at the beginning +of this terrible journey, and his thoughts and feelings then; his deep +loneliness of soul, the prevision of the pain even of fulfillment--an +endless, endless arid waste, with the welling forth of that black spirit +of evil in his own nature as the only vital thing to bear him secret +company--a moment that was wolfish to his better nature. Almost with the +remembrance came the same mood, but only as reflected in the surface of +his saner nature, not arising from it. + +As he gazed, wrapped in self-communing, on the vague formlessness of the +night, it began gradually to dissolve mysteriously, and the outlines of +the trees and the surrounding objects melted into view; a bird sang from +somewhere near by, a heavenly, clear, full-throated call that brought a +shaft of light from across the world, broadening, as the eye leaped to +it, into a great and spreading glory of flame. + +It had rained just before; the drops still hung on bush and tree, and as +the dazzling radiance of the sun touched them every drop also radiated +light, prismatic and scintillating--an almost audibly tinkling joy. So +indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this +scene--as of a mighty light informing the least atom of our tearful +human existence--that the profoundest depths of Justin's nature opened +to the illumination. + +In that moment, with calm eyes, and lips firmly pressed together, his +thoughts reached upward; far, far upward. For the first time, he felt in +accordance with something divine and beyond--an accordance that seemed +to solve the meaning of life; what had gone and what was to come. All +the hopes, the planning, the seeking and slaving, whatever they +accomplished or did not accomplish, they fashioned us, ourselves. As it +had been, so it still would be. But for what had gone before, he had not +had this hour. + +It was the journey itself that counted--the dear joys by the way, that +come even through suffering and through pain--the joy of the red dawn, +of the summer breeze, of the winter sun; the joy of children, the joy of +companionship. + +He held out his arm unconsciously as Lois stole into the room. + + THE END + + + + + By Mary Stewart Cutting + +THE SUBURBAN WHIRL + + The first story in the book may be properly termed a "long" story of + married life. It is a wholesome, delicately humorous and pathetic + account of the struggles of a young couple to establish themselves + in the suburbs. With this, three equally charming shorter stories of + "the happiest time" make up the volume. + + "The charm of these stories is that they are about real people in a + real world." _San Francisco Call_. + + _Illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + "Mrs. Cutting has written a book so typically American that it + should appeal to every American reader who respects the institution + of marriage, and who is honest enough to admit that love is the only + solution of the problem." _New York Globe_. + + _Seventh Edition. Cloth, $1.35_ + +MORE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE + + "As they celebrate true love, not the yearning kind, but the brand + that cherishes and forgets and forgives and strengthens, they should + go with the wedding presents of every June bride." _Cleveland + Leader_. + + _Frontispiece. $1.25_ + +LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP + + "Readers who enjoyed the 'Little Stories of Married Life' by this + author will not be disappointed in this new collection...." _New + York Evening Post_. + + _Third Edition. 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