Copyrighted by the London Stereoscopic Co. HENRY IRVING AS MEPHISTOPHELES IN "FAUST" FROM THE DRAWING BY BERNARD PARTRIDGECopyrighted by the London Stereoscopic Co.HENRY IRVING AS MEPHISTOPHELES IN "FAUST"from the drawing by bernard partridge
Copyrighted by the London Stereoscopic Co.
from the drawing by bernard partridge
During the run of "Faust" Henry visited Oxford, and gave his address on "Four Actors" (Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, Kean). He met there one of the many people who had recently been attacking him on the ground of too long runs and too much spectacle. He wrote me an amusing account of the duel between them:
"I had supper last night at New College after the affair. A. was there, and I had it out with him—to the delight of all.
"'Too much decoration' etc., etc.
"I asked him what there was in Faust in the matter of appointments, etc., that he would like left out.
"Answer—nothing.
"'Too long runs.'
"'You, sir, are a poet,' I said. 'Perhaps it may be my privilege some day to produce a play of yours. Would you like it to have a long run or a short one?' (Roars of laughter.)
"Answer: 'Well, er, well, of course, Mr. Irving, you—well—well, a short run, of course, forart, but——'
"'Now, sir, you're on oath,' said I. 'Suppose that the fees were rolling in £10 and more a night—would you rather the play were a failure or a success?'
"'Well, well, asyouput it, I must say—er—I would rather my play had alongrun!'
"A. floored!
"He has all his life been writing articles running down good work and crying up the impossible, and I was glad to show him up a bit!
"The Vice-Chancellor made a most lovely speech after the address—an eloquent and splendid tribute to the stage.
"Bourchier presented the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a young man in a greater funk—because, I suppose, he had imitated me so often!
"From the address: 'We have watched with keen and enthusiastic interest the fine intellectual quality of all these representations, from Hamlet to Mephistopheles, with which you have enriched the contemporary stage. To your influence we owe deeper knowledge and more reverent study of the master mind of Shakespeare.' All very nice indeed!"
I never cared much for Henry's Mephistopheles—a twopence coloured part, anyway. Of course he had his moments,—he had them in every part,—but they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he wrote in the student's book, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." He never looked at the book, and the nature of thespiritappeared suddenly in a most uncanny fashion.
Another was in the Spinning-wheel Scene, when Faust defies Mephistopheles, and he silences him with "I am a spirit." Henry looked to grow a gigantic height—to hover over the ground instead of walking on it. It was terrifying.
From the collection of Robert Coster ELLEN TERRY FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1885, THE YEAR IN WHICH "OLIVIA" AND "FAUST" WERE PRODUCED AT THE LYCEUMFrom the collection of Robert CosterELLEN TERRYfrom a photograph taken about 1885, the year in which "olivia" and "faust" were produced at the lyceum
From the collection of Robert Coster
from a photograph taken about 1885, the year in which "olivia" and "faust" were produced at the lyceum
I made valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My instructor was Mr. Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin, had recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the north of England. I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel in the opera and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always broke, and at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent, but at least I worked my wheelright and gave an impression that I could spin my pound of thread a day with the best!
Copyrighted by Window & Grove ELLEN TERRY'S FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPH AS OLIVIA FROM THE COLLECTION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEYCopyrighted by Window & GroveELLEN TERRY'S FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPH AS OLIVIAFROM THE COLLECTION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY
Copyrighted by Window & Grove
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY
Two operatic stars did me the honour to copy my Margaret dress—Madame Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many mothers who would take their daughters to see the opera of "Faust" would not bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was Princess Mary of Teck, a constant patron of most of our plays.
Other people "missed the music." The popularity of an opera will often kill a play, although the play may have existed before the music was ever thought of. The Lyceum "Faust" held its own against Gounod. I liked our incidental music to the action much better. It was taken from Berlioz and Lassen, except for the Brocken music, which was the original composition of Hamilton Clarke.
In many ways "Faust" was our heaviest production. About four hundred ropes were used, each rope with a name. The list of properties and instructions to the carpenters became a joke among the theatre staff. WhenHenry first took "Faust" into the provinces, the head carpenter at Liverpool, Myers by name, being something of a humorist, copied out the list on a long, thin sheet of paper which rolled up like a royal proclamation. Instead of "God save the Queen," he wrote at the foot, with many flourishes:
"God help Bill Myers!"
ELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA AND HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR IN WILLS' PLAY "OLIVIA" FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPEELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA AND HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR IN WILLS' PLAY "OLIVIA"from a drawing by eric pape
from a drawing by eric pape
The crowded houses at "Faust" were largely composed of "repeaters," as Americans call those charming playgoers who come to see a play again and again. We found favour with the artists and musicians, too, even in "Faust"! Here is a nice letter I got during the run (itwasa long one) from that gifted singer and good woman, Madame Antoinette Sterling:
"My dear Miss Terry,"I was quite as disappointed as yourself that you were not at St. James' Hall last Monday for my concert.... Jean Ingelow said she enjoyed the afternoon very much...."I wonder if you would like to come to luncheon some day and have a little chat with her, but perhaps you already know her. I love her dearly. She has one fault—she never goes to the theatre. Oh, my! What she misses, poor thing, poor thing! We have already seen Faust twice, and are going again soon, and shall take the George Macdonalds this time. The Holman Hunts were delighted. He is one of the most interesting and clever men I have ever met, and she is very charming and clever, too. How beautifully plain you write! Give me the recipe. With many kind greetings,"Believe me, sincerely yours,Antoinette Sterling MacKinlay.
"My dear Miss Terry,
"I was quite as disappointed as yourself that you were not at St. James' Hall last Monday for my concert.... Jean Ingelow said she enjoyed the afternoon very much....
"I wonder if you would like to come to luncheon some day and have a little chat with her, but perhaps you already know her. I love her dearly. She has one fault—she never goes to the theatre. Oh, my! What she misses, poor thing, poor thing! We have already seen Faust twice, and are going again soon, and shall take the George Macdonalds this time. The Holman Hunts were delighted. He is one of the most interesting and clever men I have ever met, and she is very charming and clever, too. How beautifully plain you write! Give me the recipe. With many kind greetings,
"Believe me, sincerely yours,
Antoinette Sterling MacKinlay.
In "Faust" Violet Vanbrugh "walked on" for the first time.
My girl Edy was an "angel" in the last act. This reminds me that Henry one Valentine's Day sent me some beautiful flowers with this little rhyme:
White and red roses,Sweet and fresh posies:One bunch, for Edy,Angelof mine—Big bunch for Nell, my dear Valentine.
White and red roses,Sweet and fresh posies:One bunch, for Edy,Angelof mine—Big bunch for Nell, my dear Valentine.
ELLEN TERRY AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST" FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPEELLEN TERRY AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST"from a drawing by eric pape
from a drawing by eric pape
Henry Irving has often been attacked for not preferring Robert Louis Stevenson's "Macaire" to the version which he actually produced in 1883. It would have been hardly more unreasonable to complain of his producing "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum wasnota burlesque house! Why should Henry have done it?
It was funny to see Toole and Henry rehearsing together for "Macaire." Henry was alwaysplottingto be funny. When Toole, as Jacques Strop, hid the dinner in his pocket, Henry, after much labour, thought of his hiding the plate inside his waistcoat. There was much laughter later on when Macaire, playfully tapping Strop with his stick, cracked the plate, and the pieces fell out! Toole hadn't to bother about such subtleties, and Henry's deep-laid plans for getting a laugh must have seemed funny to dear Toole, who had only to come on and say "Whoop!" and the audience roared.
Henry's death as Macaire was one of a long list of splendid deaths. Macaire knows the game is up and makes a rush for the French windows at the back of the stage. The soldiers on the stage shoot him before he gets away. Henry did not drop, but turned round, swaggered impudently down to the table, leaned on it, then suddenly rolled over, dead.
Henry's production of "Werner" for one matinée was to do some one a good turn, and when Henry did a good turn he did it magnificently. We rehearsed the play as carefully as if we were in for a long run. Beautiful dresses were made for me by my friend Alice Carr, but when we had given that one matinée they were put away for ever. The play may be described as gloom, gloom, gloom. It was worse than "The Iron Chest."
While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner" I was pleasing myself with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was at this time Wills' secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinée of it at some other theatre, but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said: "You must do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the theatre."
So we had the matinée at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry saw me act—a whole part and from the "front," at least, for he had seen and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had known me such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a surprise. "I wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you realised," he wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me, and I continued to do it "on and off," in England and in America, until 1902.
Many people said that I was good, but that the play was bad. This was hard on Alfred Calmour. He had created the opportunity for me, and few plays with the beauty of "The Amber Heart" have come my way since. "He thinks it's all his doing!" said Henry. "If he only knew!" "Well, that's the way of authors!" I answered. "They imagine so much more about their work than we put into it that although we may seem to the outsider to be creating, to the author we are, at our best, only doing our duty by him!"
Our next production was "Macbeth"; but meanwhile we had visited America three times. In the next chapter I shall give an account of my tours in America, of my friends there; and of some of the impressions that the vast, wonderful country made on me.
FOOTNOTES:[41]Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry(Mrs. Carew)[42]Madame: Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine.Bonheurpar votre art qui est noble et sincère—peinecar je sens tristesse au coeur de voir une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son âme à l'art—comme vous le faites—quand c'est la vie même, votre coeur même, qui parle tendrement, douleureusement, noblement sous votre jeu. Je ne puis pas me débarrasser d'une certaine tristesse quand je vois des artistes si nobles et hauts tels que vous et Monsieur Irving. Si vous deux vous êtes si fortes de soumettre (avec un travail continuel) la vie à l'art, moí de mon coin, je vous regarde comme des forces de la nature même qui auraient droit de vivre pour eux-mêmes et pas pour la foule. Je n'ose pas vous déranger, Madame, et d'ailleurs j'ai tant à faire aussi, qu'il m'est impossible de vous dire de vive voix tout le grand plaisir que vous m'avez donnée, mais parce que j'ai senti votre coeur. Veuillez, chère madame, croire au mien qui ne demande pas mieux dans cet instant que vous admirer et vous le dire tant bien que mal d'une manière quelconque.Bien à vous,E. Duse.
[41]Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry(Mrs. Carew)
[41]Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry(Mrs. Carew)
[42]Madame: Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine.Bonheurpar votre art qui est noble et sincère—peinecar je sens tristesse au coeur de voir une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son âme à l'art—comme vous le faites—quand c'est la vie même, votre coeur même, qui parle tendrement, douleureusement, noblement sous votre jeu. Je ne puis pas me débarrasser d'une certaine tristesse quand je vois des artistes si nobles et hauts tels que vous et Monsieur Irving. Si vous deux vous êtes si fortes de soumettre (avec un travail continuel) la vie à l'art, moí de mon coin, je vous regarde comme des forces de la nature même qui auraient droit de vivre pour eux-mêmes et pas pour la foule. Je n'ose pas vous déranger, Madame, et d'ailleurs j'ai tant à faire aussi, qu'il m'est impossible de vous dire de vive voix tout le grand plaisir que vous m'avez donnée, mais parce que j'ai senti votre coeur. Veuillez, chère madame, croire au mien qui ne demande pas mieux dans cet instant que vous admirer et vous le dire tant bien que mal d'une manière quelconque.Bien à vous,E. Duse.
[42]Madame: Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine.Bonheurpar votre art qui est noble et sincère—peinecar je sens tristesse au coeur de voir une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son âme à l'art—comme vous le faites—quand c'est la vie même, votre coeur même, qui parle tendrement, douleureusement, noblement sous votre jeu. Je ne puis pas me débarrasser d'une certaine tristesse quand je vois des artistes si nobles et hauts tels que vous et Monsieur Irving. Si vous deux vous êtes si fortes de soumettre (avec un travail continuel) la vie à l'art, moí de mon coin, je vous regarde comme des forces de la nature même qui auraient droit de vivre pour eux-mêmes et pas pour la foule. Je n'ose pas vous déranger, Madame, et d'ailleurs j'ai tant à faire aussi, qu'il m'est impossible de vous dire de vive voix tout le grand plaisir que vous m'avez donnée, mais parce que j'ai senti votre coeur. Veuillez, chère madame, croire au mien qui ne demande pas mieux dans cet instant que vous admirer et vous le dire tant bien que mal d'une manière quelconque.
Bien à vous,
E. Duse.
Two men went up into the sanctum sanctorum of the Quill Drivers' Club to lunch. The younger was a writer of fiction and the elder a clergyman, his friend and guest, by chance encountered on a rare visit to town.
They were evidently absorbed in discussion when they sat down, for the host hardly interrupted himself long enough to give the briefest of orders to the attendant waiter before he leaned forward across the table and resumed eagerly: "Let the critics rage furiously together if they will"—referring to a controversy excited by one of his late stories. "The thing is going to stand! I believe, and I'll go bail there's no reasonable person who doesn't believe, that falsehood is justifiable, and more than justifiable, on many occasions."
"Only everybody will differ as to the occasions," put in the clergyman, the humor in the corners of his eyes counterbalanced by the graveness of the lines about his mouth.
"I'll go further than that," continued the writer, striking his hand on the table impressively. "In the circumstances as I described them I won't call it falsehood! I agree with whoever it was who said that one lied only when one intentionally deceived a person who had a right to know the truth."
"And suppose," said the clergyman, with sudden earnestness, "the knowledge of the truth would be cruel, painful, harmful even, to the person who had the right to it. What then? Would you still owe it to him, or not?"
"Why, then, of course, I wouldn't tell it," answered the other. "You might call it what you liked. I suppose it would be a passive lie, if you're particular about its front name; but there have been lots of fine ones, actively and passively told, since the world began."
"Fine?" echoed the clergyman thoughtfully. "I wonder!"
"Fitting, proper, expedient," amended the writer impatiently.
"Fitting, proper, expedient," repeated the clergyman—"even when the result appeared to justify it. I—wonder!"
He sank into a reverie so profound that the younger man had to call his attention to the fact that food was being offered to him; and then he helped himself mechanically, as if his mind had drifted too far to be immediately recalled to material things.
"I wonder!" he said again vaguely, his eyes, sad and thoughtful, fixed upon distance.
"I was once, you see," he went on, making a sudden effort and looking his companion in the face with a directness that was almost disconcerting. "I was once involved in a case where such a lie had been told, and I—well, I am inclined, if you have no objections, to tell you the whole story and let you judge.
"Some years ago I broke down from over-work and worry, and was ordered away for my health. I chose to travel about my own country, and at a hotel in a certain place where many people go to recover from imaginary ailments I met a man who was being slowly crippled forever by a real and incurable one. His place at the table was next to mine, and every day he was brought in, in his wheeled chair, from the sunniest corner of the piazza, fed neatly and expeditiously by his manservant (his own hands were almost useless), and fetched away again. During the meal when I first sat beside him we entered into conversation, and I found him so cultivated, charming, and humorous a companion that for the rest of my stay I neglected no opportunity of indulging myself in his society."
"Of course it was no indulgence at all to him," said the writer, whose affectionate regard for his friend was one of long standing.
"I hope so," answered the other, "and, indeed, I had every reason to suppose that the liking which sprang up between us was no less on his side than on my own. We were mutually attracted in spite of, or perhapsbecauseof, our fundamental differences in disposition, opinions,beliefs; though no Christian could have borne affliction with a braver patience than he—the braver in that he did not look to a hereafter for comfort."
"A continuous powder and no jam to come," threw in the writer, with the glare of battle in his eye, for he also had opinions and beliefs at variance with those of his companion. "There are a good many of us who have to face that."
"Not many in worse case than he," returned the clergyman gently, declining to be drawn into discussion. "But although the use of his limbs was denied him, he took a keener delight than any man I have ever known in the compensations that his mind, through books, and his senses, through contact with the outer world, brought him. Beauty of color and form, beauty in nature, beauty in people, was an exquisite pleasure to him, and music an intense—I had almost said a sacred passion. He drank in lovely sights and sweet sounds with an almost painful appreciation, and I remember well his telling me in his whimsical way—it was during one of the last conversations I had with him before my departure—that, travel about as I would with my mere automatic arms and legs, I could never overtake such happiness as he did on the wings of harmony.
"We corresponded, from time to time, for a year or two, I in the usual manner and he by means of dictation to his servant, who was an earnest if somewhat poor performer on the type-writer. But gradually the thread of our intercourse was broken in some way and our letters ceased."
"I've always said that nothing but community of interests preserved friendship," declared the writer sententiously, "with the exception, of course, of our own."
"I was surprised, therefore," went on the clergyman, "to receive about eighteen months ago a brief note telling me that a great sorrow and a great joy had come into his life almost simultaneously, and begging me to go to him, if he might so far trespass upon our acquaintance, as he had 'matters about which it behooved a man'—I am repeating his words—'to consult another wiser than himself.' I started at once. It took me all day to accomplish the journey, and it was early evening when I arrived at the little station he had mentioned as the place where he would send somebody to meet me. I found the carriage without difficulty, and was driven for some five miles through the beautiful autumn woods.
"It was a low, square, comfortable-looking paper-weight of a house," he went on after a moment, "beaming welcome from an open front door, where my friend's confidential servant stood waiting for me. He conducted me at once to my room, saying that dinner would be served as soon as I could make myself ready and join his master in the library. This I made haste to do. I found my friend in his wheeled chair, near a cheerfully crackling fire in a delightful room lined with books from its scarlet-carpeted floor to its oak-beamed ceiling. He welcomed me warmly and yet with a certain constraint, and I felt—it might have been some subtle thought-transference—that the thing he had it in his mind to discuss with me was one which only an extremity of trouble would have induced him to discuss with any man.
"Dinner was announced almost before our first greetings were over, and an excellent dinner it was—cooked by an old woman who, he declared, had virtually ruled him and the house ever since he could remember, and waited upon by the man, who also attended to his master's peculiar needs with the utmost swiftness and dexterity. The household, I subsequently learned, consisted of only these two, an elderly housemaid, and the white-haired coachman who had driven me from the station.
"'Why they stay with me in this out-of-the-way place, without a grumble, all the year round, I can't see,' said my host, after our meal was over and we were once more alone in the library. 'And, by the way,' he added, turning his face toward me suddenly,—I don't know whether I have mentioned that he had a particularly handsome face,—'apropos of seeing, what I have not seen before I shall have no further chance of informing myself about now, for I have become, in these last six months, completely blind.'
"The unexpected horror of the announcement, the shock of it, left me for the moment speechless. But I looked at him and saw, what I suppose I might in a more direct light have noticed before, that his eyes had the dull, dumb stare of blindness. Before the inarticulate sound of pity I made could have reached him, he continued:
"'I used to tell myself, quite sincerely, I think, that as long as I had an eye or an ear left I'd not waste my time envying any other man. Nature seems to have been afraid I'd see too much, so she has cut off my powers of vision. That is the great sorrow that has come to me. The great joy, if I may accept it (and it is about that that I have been driven by my conscience to consult you), is that I have found—or perhaps, as that suggests a certain amount ofactivity on my part, I'd better sayFatehas found for me—here, living at my very gates, a woman who loves me!'
"He appeared to dread interruption, for he went on hurriedly: 'Extraordinary, isn't it? But let me tell you how it happened. I've a garden out there to the south, and last summer, soon after this thing first came upon me, I used to have myself wheeled there and left in the shade for hours to think things out where I could feel light and color and fresh air about me. On the other side of my wall is her cottage, and one day she began to play, play like an angel. You know how that would move me. I sent a note to her telling her that a blind beggar had been lifted into heaven for a little while by her music, and would be glad if, of her clemency, he might sometimes be so lifted again. After that she played to me every day, and so, she being alone—for her mother, it seems, had died early in the spring, soon after they came—and I being lonely, we gradually drifted into—Oh, I know it's monstrous!' he exclaimed, breaking off in his recital, and evidently afraid of the mental recoil he suspected in me, 'monstrous to consider that a beautiful young woman should bear the name, even, of wife to me; but she is very poor, and now entirely desolate. I am, comparatively speaking, well off, and I cannot live long! I shall at least leave her better able to fight the world. You'll think I could do that, I suppose, in any event, for a man such as I am—a sightless head in command of a body that cannot move hand or foot—mightwillwhat he pleased to any woman without exciting adverse comment; but I ask you, haven't I the right to allow myself the happiness of her near companionship for whatever time it may be before I die? It seems to me that I have, since, instead of shrinking from me, she loves me, and is willing, indeed,—bless her wonderful heart for it,—wilfulto marry me. What time is it?' he cried abruptly, turning his blank eyes toward the clock on the mantelpiece.
"'Five minutes before nine,' I answered.
"'She will be here directly,' he said. 'I had a piano of my mother's put in order and moved in here as soon as the garden grew too cold for me. She comes every evening to play to me. You will see her with me, and alone if you like, and to-morrow you must tell me, man to man, what you think I ought or ought not to do. She knows that I was to write and put the case before you, but she will be surprised to find you here.'
"'I will do my best,' said I, infinitely moved, 'to make friends with her.'
"'I wish I could tell what you are thinking now!' he cried out with sudden passion, and then, before I could reply, he said, 'Hush! I hear her in the hall.'
"All the excitement died out of his face, leaving it white and drawn, but peaceful. I had heard nothing.
"'She's coming,' he whispered, 'and she'll be so embarrassed, poor, pretty soul. She thinks it's of no account, her being pretty, but I tell her that, blind as I am, I think Ifeelthe atmosphere of her beauty, and if she were plain she would not please me so.'
"As he spoke the curtains in front of the doorway parted. My eyes, lifted to the height of fair tallness they expected to encounter, looked for an instant upon vacancy. Then they dropped to meet those of a grotesque and piteous little hunchback, whose agonized gaze cried to me, as did the hitching of her poor shoulders and the sudden trembling flutter of her hands to her mouth: 'For God's sake, don't betray me!'
"He leaned his head a little on one side, listening to the silence. Then he said to me, laughing: 'Is she as charming as all that? Or do you refrain from speech for fear of alarming her?'
"She stood quite still, her sharp-featured, tragic face, with its halo of reddish hair, raised toward mine, and her expression imploring, pleading, mutely compelling me.
"I had to answer his question.
"'Both,' I said.
"As I finished he called to her: 'I always knew you were lovely, Rica, but this is a real tribute—the dumbness of admiration!'
"She told me later that he had fantastically described her to herself after hearing her play, at the same time dwelling upon the happiness it was to him to think of her so. She had longed to make her affliction known to him, but for his own sake had not dared.
"'No one here will undeceive him unless you bid them,' she said, 'and you will not be so cruel! What has he left in life but this illusion? What have I but my love for him?'
"And she did love him! I had seen tenderness and pity leap from her eyes whenever they turned in his direction, and he—What should a man have done?" ended the clergyman.
The writer shook his head. "What did you do?" he asked rather hoarsely.
"I married them," answered the other simply.
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. 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 there, 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 moneyallhave 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 shemighthave 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 and going into the house.
He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in hisheart 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 his 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 Lanston'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 Collingwood 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 an hour 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. 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 Collingwood. 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."
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, practised 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 eyesas 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 set 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.
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.
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 why! Her voice was tremulous as she went on: "It is very unusual to hear any one 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——" 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;heprized 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 forher. 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 dust-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.Youought 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 they 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.
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; butit was a feeling that he would have been the last to be credited with, 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 takeus?" 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.
"Lois?"
"Yes?"
Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary overhead swinging 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-fulness 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 were 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 any one 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 Idocare for him. I like him better than any one I know. We are sympathetic on a great many points. No one—no onehas 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 springtime, 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 Lee, 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 any one 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 over, 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.
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.Pleasedon't look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, though he has his own chiffonnier in the other room—he's such abadboy! 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. Heisjust 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'sveryevident 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. 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."