He played a chord or two more to her silenceHe 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.”
“Iwill 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 forhim,” objected Dosia, stiffening.
“No, of course, you don’tneedto; but, still, a girl should always look as pretty as shecan; 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 newbooks. 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 hehasevery 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 youif 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 hewouldgo away for days and days at a stretch. And now it is getting to be—anytime. 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 embarrassedgratitude, 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 beverycareful. 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 shortevening 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 passednow?” 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.Mustyou 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, ofcourse!”
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 affectthe 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’shappiness. 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 conversationswith 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 dinnerin 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 wouldhave 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, hemustcome 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,willinghim 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, hehas a little tickle in his throat that keeps him coughing, I knew it was no use tellinghimto 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 hurtsme,” 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 girlsare. No, I thank you, my dear, I cannot sit down, Imustgo 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 thanswell 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 wouldhaveto 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 tohim, 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 blindingtears 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 hadsaid,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 graycloak, 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 anywoman 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 trembledas 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.
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 purelyPlatonic 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—forIbelieve 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 heisa sweet fellow when he’s nice—he was the dearestlittleboy! 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 livingthing, 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, broughtnewspapers 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 verygreat 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 whathesays?”
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 sittingby 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 Iamyounger. 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’tfit. 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 andburning 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 wasonegirl 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 Ididn’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 tellme! 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 himallthe 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 goodnight,—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 himalways. 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 achoking 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.