The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. Dosia could hear Justin’s voice upraised toward his only son, and Lois’ pleading “Please, Justin!”
“Be quiet, Lois; I’ll settle this. Go down-stairs.”
“I want dinky orter.” The child’s voice was high.
“You have just had a drink of water; lie still.”
“Redge ’ants ’noder dinky orter.”
“Do you hear me? Lie still.”
“Let me take him, Justin; I’m sure he isn’t well. I——”
Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, and could imagine the look from Justin that had commanded her obedience. There was a definite masculine authority about him before which, on those rare occasions when he chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric ages. Only the son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness caught from the same blood.
It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother down-stairs, vibrating with sympathy for her child, could not understand Justin’s attitude, or why he was so much more severe with the boy than he had ever been with Zaidee.
Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess, toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry. But the boy was different. Civilizedman still usually lives in the outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it. His “Lie still, you rascal, or I’ll make you,” voiced in its sternness an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee.
Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife to kiss her good-by.
“Are you going out again?” Her voice had a dull patience in it and her eyes refused to meet his.
“Yes; did you want me for anything special?”
He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at Lois’ insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. Justin’s discarded one had passed through every stage of decent finesse—the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude to make a new and opulent person of him.
“No, of course I don’t want you for anything special”—she spoke in a monotone. “I only thought you were going to stay home.”
“I’ve got to go to Leverich’s, and I want to speak to Selden about the house first. I promised him I’d stop there.”
They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the hill, and Selden was the architect.
“You have been out every night this week”—there was a suspicion of tears in her voice. “I do so hate to be left alone.”
“You have Dosia.”
“Dosia! How wouldyoulike to be left with Dosia? I can’t make out that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home this evening—won’t you, dear?”
“I can’t—I wish I could.” He said the words mechanically, for he was burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. “I must be at Selden’s by half-past eight.’
“It is only a quarter-past now—you can walk there in five minutes. Do sit down for a moment. I don’t get any chance to talk to you at all, and you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any more—except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night.”
Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrast—her rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful, but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his hat against it. Shelacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a loss——
Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness of their possession lately,—the sweetness that consists in watching the unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,—but when he had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious moments waste. He could hear Zaidee’s gentle little voice repeating her mother’s perfunctory extenuation: “Poor daddy’s nervous; come away, Redge!”
“I hope you’ll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the stairs,” said Lois suddenly.
“He’ll put one there if he can.”
“If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I don’t want the house if he can’t put the closet in. I——”
“All right. I’ve got to go now.” If he had cared to think about it, he might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried him from her.
The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures—of which the house on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with theprinciple of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality, there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the main one.
The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute are from the twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but “hands” must be paid off on Saturday night; there had been one Saturday when there had been what Leverich called “tall hustling” by him and Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had thought of his backers as men of millions—with that easy, assured confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions were in the concrete, solid and golden—a bottomless store in reserve. He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant quality, runninglike quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little butter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover an emergency was a daily expedient—the ability to do so ranked as a part of one’s assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the “business” seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade passed and repassed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and the children’s.
Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but a woman. His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because she must wait until night to setherself right with him again. At those times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her children—her only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother’s absence.
She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal annoyance,—like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,—that measurably lessened the joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man must have patience with his wife’s complainings, and try always to remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it, which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him.
Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired in an old “dress suit,” the conventional lines of which, with the stiff expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature still more pronounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one armstretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring earnestness.
“Well, you are all right,” he said, after the first greetings; “Miss Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South I’d say just what I thought of you, but I’m afraid to up here; folks are too careful about complimentin’ for me. When I see a young lady like you,—or like Mrs. Alexander, here,—” he rose and bowed gallantly, “I want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. There’s nothing so beautiful on God’s earth to me as a beautiful woman—unless it’s a mother. A mother doesn’t need to have a complexion if she’s got the mother spirit shinin’ out of her. I had a mother once—a better never lived. She’s dead.”
“That is very sad,” said Lois, in the pause that followed this announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful communing.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it.
“How is your wife?” asked Dosia. “Have you seen her lately?”
“I was home for a week around Christmas-time,” answered Mr. Cater. “It’s sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short period—at least, I find it so. I don’t knowasit pays,except as something to look forward to before you’ve done it; there’s a good deal in that. My wife lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home.”
“I should think she would want to stay here with you,” said Dosia.
Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. “Well, the fact is,” he conceded, “my wife’s powerful fond of her family. There’s nothing against a woman being fond of her family.”
“Oh, no,” said Lois.
“No, ma’am. My wife’s a mighty fine woman. If I’d had the luck to belong to her family—but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to me crops up, I expect, when I ain’t countin’ on it. She did bring the children and try livin’ up here in a flat the first year I went into the business, but it made her so pinin’ she had to go back; she wasn’t used to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood.Youknow my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin’ sort of old and agin’, and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin’ her, I reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin’ a gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he’d promised her to quit. Her sister’s husband, Jim Pierce, he’d lit out before. Now, there’s the other brother, Satterson—he’s a mighty fine fellow, six foot two in his stockin’s, but he doesn’tdoanything. Just drinks. My wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don’t blame any woman for being devoted to her family—shows heart.”
“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Dosia, staring at Mr.Cater, who wore an inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater’s earnings; she knew his wife as a pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth.
“After all, there isn’t much in a man, when you get down to it, to interest a woman,” continued Mr. Cater impartially. “She wants him to think ofher; of co’se it’s his business to. I had a sort of set idea to begin on—but there’s nothin’ in life so wreckin’ as a set idea; I’ve found that out. You’ve got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and turn it so’s you can see to keep on your windin’ way without runnin’ down your fellow-bein’s—isn’t that so? I don’t blame any woman for findin’ out that a man doesn’t always make up for home and mother—I don’t know that I always yearn for my own society.” His inscrutable expression changed to a smile. “I reckon you won’t yearn for it, either, if I go on talkin’ in this way.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Dosia, dimpling. “Did you see my father and mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?”
“Why—about the same as usual,” replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly materialized itself to Dosia. “I promised them I’d come and see you—and meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia’s comin’ here that I got acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander,” he continued, turning to Lois. “He’s a mighty fine man. He and I, we’re choppin’ at the same log, so to speak, only he’s takin’ side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon he’s got a pretty good backin’?”
“Oh, yes,” affirmed Lois.
“Yes, ma’am. Of course, he doesn’t talk about it. I haven’t seen Mr. Alexander much for a couple of weeks; he’s been busy and I’ve been busy—we lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his friends—Mr. Leverich for one—slightly in the way of business. Mr. Martin—Mr. Martin’s a mannobodyknows more’n slightly. You would not think he was such a smart business man, would you? He’s so sort of small and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. ButIdon’t care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake in all they touch. Now you think I’m hard on him, don’t you?” He hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois: “Martin sort of reminds me of somethin’ that happened with my two boys when I was home at Christmas. They’re little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you.”
“They are dear little fellows,” said Dosia warmly.
“They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind ’em, and Angy—that’s the eldest, he’s six—was stoppin’ the way; so I says to him, ‘What’s stoppin’ you, son?’ and he answers: ‘Oh, I’m carryin’ up Jim’s cake and my cake, and I’m eatin’Jim’s cake now.’ That’s like Martin for all the world—always carryin’ somebody’s cake for ’em, and swallowin’ it on the way. Well, doesn’t it seem good to be lookin’ at you again, Miss Dosia! But I’m sorry Alexander isn’t in, too.”
“Oh, I hope he’ll come before you leave,” returned Lois. It seemed a foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure, half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There wasa genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent.
Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word “home” carried such suggested association that Dosia half forgot that it had never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy.
When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more.
“Well, this is comfort,” he said, with a sort of wistful gratitude. “I’ve been thinkin’ ’twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train, but I’m sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young ladies takin’ all this trouble for me—well, I just can’t tell you how I appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside.”
“You must get pretty lonely sometimes,” said Lois kindly, with a sudden sympathy for something in his tone.
He nodded slowly. “Well, yes, I do; but I’ve quit thinkin’ of it, as a rule. I reckon I’ve got about as much as I deserve in this world, when you come to sizin’ things up. If you get to pityin’ yourself, you slump; you slump alltopieces—ain’t no mortal good to yourself nor anybody else. I’ve foundthatout.”
“You seem to find out a good many things,” said Lois, with a twinge of assent.
“Well, yes, I do.” His face relaxed in a pleased smile. “Keep addin’ to my collection daily; but it isn’t cheap, no more than other collectin’—costs money. Girard says—by the way, I never asked you if you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the train. I didn’t know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this rabbit’s more’n good. I haven’t had one like it since I was with Girard last year.”
“No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois a little wearily.
“Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought to. He’s aman. Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s related to the Wilmots, Judge Wilmot’s family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired of it myself. I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money—or are a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that’s risin’ into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible to walk on somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.”
“How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia.
“Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody ever was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go through what he has, though it’s made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after they’d moved ’way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t know that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what hermind got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died at a little town in Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn’t anyone to look after the child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ mother, used to crawl into the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer toher.”
“How did he get away?” asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the boy’s little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although the hurt had been over so long ago.
“Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn’t tell me the whole of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own people, too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba—I guess some of the wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on some government business; he’s a personal friend of the President. He’s young, too, not more’n twenty-eight. He’s bound to get ahead at whatever he sets himself to. But he’s got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly kill a big Swede once that was wallopin’a sick horse. What you laughin’ at, Miss Dosia? I reckon we’re all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn’tthattime, is it?” He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at the clock that was striking.
“I’m afraid it is,” affirmed Lois.
“Then I’ve got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. ’Tisn’t manners to eat and run, I know, but—” He had risen and was swiftly putting on his coat in the hall. “Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin’. Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your hospitality; I doso. I—” He was loping down the path already, his long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight. Dosia called after him mischievously, “You’d better wait until the twelve-three,” before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Cater’s presence had been.
She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any reminiscence whatever.
He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased andsurprised to find traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late.
“Mr. Cater has been here,” announced Lois, in explanation.
“Cater! I’m sorry to have missed him.”
“He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not go until eleven, and I was sure you would be in before that.”
“Well, I meant to be.”
“Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,”—something prompted her against her will to say what had been rankling in her memory,—“he thinks Mr. Martin is like a crab, and that he takes people in between his claws and pinches them. I wish you’d be careful.”
Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. “He will not pinch me, at all events,” he said shortly. After a moment’s pause he made an effort to return to his former manner, but with an altered tone:
“I’m sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting with Selden about the house; you can have the closet. After that we were all talking at Leverich’s. He had a friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow, extraordinarily interesting; he was giving us points on the South American trade. He’s going to be of great use to us, he goes down there again in the spring. He’s a fine-looking fellow, by the way, tall and well set up; he reminds me of Brent, Lois—you remember him? The same kind of bright, resolute face; only this man’s browner.”
Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, Justin turned to Dosia, who had slipped back into the room to look under the table and chairs for a blue bowthat had fallen from her hair. She stood now in the doorway with it in her hand.
“He came up from the South the same day you did last fall, Dosia, he was in that wreck. It must have been a horrible thing.” Justin broke off at the retrospection of the narrative.
“Yes,” said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the door for support.
“You were fortunate to get off so well.” Absorbed in his own recital, Justin did not observe her. “He was going from one car to another when the train went off the trestle—I don’t wonder you would never talk about it, Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There was a poor young girl who was alone, like you—he didn’t know what became of her; he was ill himself in the hospital for two weeks afterwards. His description of the whole thing was extraordinarily vivid.” Justin was now bolting windows and putting out lights as he talked. “You two girls must go to bed at once; it’s nearly twelve.”
“What was his name?” asked Dosia.
“His name? Why, I thought I’d told you. His name’s Girard—Bailey Girard.”
“Reginald has the measles.”
Lois made the announcement breathlessly, as she stood outside of the drawing-room, addressing the visitors who sat on the sofa, talking to Dosia.
“The doctor has just gone, and he says it is the measles. I don’t suppose I had better come in the room.” There was a tone of resentment in her voice which seemed to originate in the idea of being excluded; in reality, it was caused by the bitter thought that she had known for a couple of days that Redge was not well, and that his father had been exacting with him. “I really suppose I had better not come in.”
“Oh, don’t mind me!” Mrs. Leverich, gorgeous in velvet and furs, spoke reassuringly. “There are no children at our house, and I’ve had the measles.”
“Of course, it’s not scarlet fever,” continued Lois, dropping into a chair, “or diphtheria. I suppose Zaidee will get it, and we have to be quarantined. I don’t know what to do about you, Dosia.” She was feeling the fell blow of a contagious disease, which upsets every previously stable condition.
“I’ve had the measles,” said the girl, but she added with quick anxiety: “There are my lessons; do you supposeit will make any difference about them? I don’t see how I can lose them now, and there’s that concert Saturday.”
“If we’re quarantined, you’re quarantined,” said Lois tersely. “If there wasanyplace where you could go and stay——”
“Mrs. Alexander, let her come to me,” said Mrs. Leverich warmly. “I’d love to have her; Ireallywould. She can keep up with her lessons and engagements just the same then. You know, I’m always so happy when I can have a young girl in the house; and as for Mr. Leverich, nothing pleases him better. Go and pack your trunk at once, my dear, and we’ll take it on the carriage as we go back.”
Dosia looked hesitatingly at Lois.
“Why—I do not know,” said Lois, surprised, yet considering.
“ButIdo.” Mrs. Leverich spoke with a cordial authority that, after a little more conversation, settled the matter.
Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise little help of Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from the closet and toilet articles from the dressing-table, and in her efforts dropped the red ribbon from her hair into the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, swift huggings from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was something on her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor below, she ran down to speak to her, half dressed: “Lois, I hate to leave you here alone; I don’t mind being kept from things, really and truly. Let me stay and help youwith dear little Redge.” For once her sympathy made her natural.
“No, you had better go,” said Lois. She had but one desire—to be left at liberty at last with her own. She added, to avoid further pleading:
“I would rather be alone.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Dosia, shrinking. But conscience had unexpectedly claimed her, and she went on, hesitantly, with a painful timidity, her color coming and going:
“I wanted to ask—do you think I ought to go to Mrs. Leverich’s, after what you said? Won’t Mr. Barr be there?”
In the whole realm of the mother’s mind there was no room for anything at present but her measles-smitten household. She looked at Dosia as if making an effort to understand. “Why, yes, I suppose he will be there. Just don’t have anything to do with him if you don’t want to. You will not need to; he is out of the house most of the time, anyway.”
“Oh, very well,” assented Dosia, chilled and yet relieved. The blood of youth was already running riot at the delightful prospect of another change. But she slipped into the nursery to kiss poor little feverish Redge good-by, and leaned out of the carriage that was driving her away to wave her hand again and again to Zaidee, whose red cheeks and little snub-nose were pressed close to the window-pane.
Mrs. Leverich was a woman who was somewhat below par in birth and education, devoid of certain finer instincts, and used to an overflow of luxury in her daily livingthat amounted sometimes to vulgar display. To balance this, she was still handsome, if somewhat too stout, and hospitable to a superlative degree. “Staying company” was a necessity to her happiness. She had an absolute passion for making other people comfortable, and surrounded her guests with a kindness and forethought so enveloping that it almost spoiled them for contact afterwards with a rude world. She really possessed in this regard an unselfish good-heartedness, mingled with a sort of vanity that was pleased with applause at its manipulations; her own comfort was indifferent to her beside the subtler and warmer pleasure of being the source of good to others. It is no figure of speech to say that she was willing to do anything to promote the welfare of her guests; it was no hardship to give up her own way in their interests, or to do any act, however tiring and distasteful, that gave pleasure to anyone. She hated cards, yet she would play long, tedious games with beaming incompetence, to make up a hand; she disliked the smell of tobacco, but was never satisfied until every man around her was happily supplied with cigars or pipes. Music was a jangle to her, and any book above the caliber of the fiction which displays a low-necked authoress upon the cover a weariness indeed; but she would labor unceasingly to place both music and literature within the reach of her guests. She had windows opened when she herself was chilly, and fires lighted when she was suffering with the heat; she took long drives in the hot sun when she would have much preferred a nap; she chaperoned girls uncomplainingly until five o’clock in the morning. The least wish of a guest, spoken or divined, was gratified if within herpower. It is true that she had a retinue of servants at her command, but, if necessary, she would have served her guests with her own hands, and had been known to do so. There was only one drawback to her hospitality—she welcomed, but did not speed the parting guest. It was difficult indeed to leave without a pitched battle, and the effort of temporary disunion was so great as sometimes to result in a permanent rupture of friendship. Her “I see—you don’t want to stay with us any longer” voiced that injured feeling which blasts whatever it comes in contact with, and which disclaimers serve only to heighten. Once away from her, her interest in the former guest ceased almost entirely, no matter how close the association had been under her roof; outside of it everyone was lost in a haze which called for a distinct and wearying effort, seldom undertaken, to penetrate.
In appearance she was on the Oriental type of her half-brother, Lawson Barr, but with a softness, both of expression and contour, which he did not possess. She was ten years older than he. Her motions and the tone of her voice were languid. Her husband—who enjoyed the benefits of being the chief and permanent guest in this household—was extremely fond of her, and proud of her beauty and popularity. Leverich was one of those coarse-seeming and coarse-acting men who, nevertheless, come of a race of gentlefolk, and who have innately, and no matter how much they may choose to overlay the fact, certain traditions. He had been known to say, in rebuttal of some criticism on his wife’s breeding, what was quite true—that she was good enough forhim; but he had, underneath, a little contempt for her because she was. It was one ofthe traditions that a man should find a quality in his wife to revere.
Leverich liked to surround his wife with luxuries, to give her everything that money could buy and that her gently sensuous temperament craved. Her attachment was riveted to him by gifts of clothing and jewelry and bric-à-brac as well as money—such things being to her the only tangible evidences of affection. Dosia had hitherto seen the house only as a caller. She was impressed now by the richness of the furnishings above, as she was led up to her room, a large, many-windowed apartment on the second floor. It was all a gleam of polished mahogany, and brass and mirrors and silver toilet articles, blended with rose-silk draperies; the alcoved bed was spread with a flowered silk counterpane, the floors covered with rich Eastern rugs; easy-chairs and low tables spread with books dotted the room; a couch piled high with down cushions stood at a seductive angle. A maid glided forward to take Dosia’s hat and cloak, while another knelt at the hearth to light the logs upon the brass andirons, and Mrs. Leverich came in and out in an overflow of solicitude.
“I really think you had better rest. Youmustbe tired. No, of course”—at Dosia’s laughing remonstrance—“the drive was nothing, but the shock—a shock like that tells on you before you know it. Here comes your trunk; have you the key? Elizabeth, unpack Miss Dosia’s trunk, and get out a dressing-gown for her. I’m going to insist on your lying down on the lounge for a while. Now, don’t do that, Elizabeth will take off your shoes for you. And, Amelia,”—this to the maid at the hearth,—“bring up some tea and biscuits. No, you don’t care for tea? Well,a glass of sherry, then, and some hothouse grapes. My dear Dosia,—you’ll let me call you Dosia, won’t you?—you may not feel the need of it now, but it will do you good. I’m not going to stay with you, I’ll just move this little table with the magazines on it near you, and leave you to rest; but first I want to show you this.” She opened the door of a smaller, hexagonal apartment adjoining. “I’m going to turn it into a music-room for you.”
“Oh, Mrs. Leverich!” protested Dosia, in amazement.
“I’ve been thinking of it all the way home in the carriage. Of course, you won’t want to practice down-stairs, where people are coming in and out all the time; it would be very annoying to you. This has been used as an extra dressing-room. I shall have those thick hangings taken down and the furniture moved out, and put in light chairs and a cottage piano, and a few palms over by the window. You’ll see!”
“But, Mrs. Leverich——”
“Now, don’t say aword; it’s all settled. Elizabeth will come to you when it’s time to dress, so you need give yourself no anxiety about that. Just let me draw this coverlet over you and tuck your feet in. Now, how sweet you do look, to be sure!”
Dosia did “look sweet,” and as comfortable and soft as a kitten. The light-blue kimono of outing flannel,—of which she had been half ashamed when the maid unpacked it,—though cheap, was becoming; her loosened hair fell over the blended pillows and the rosy coverlet. The wood fire at which she gazed crackled and sent out the pungent, aromatic smell of Southern pine, which mingled with the perfume of a bunch of violets on the table near the goldensherry in its crystal glass, and the plate of white and reddish grapes. There was the unaccustomed stillness of a large, well-appointed house, where the walls were deadened to sound, and the floors had thick-piled rugs upon them, and the servants walked with soft-shod feet. Such luxurious well-being had never been Dosia’s before. This was like being in a fairy palace, where you had only to clap your hands to get anything you wished for. And the most charming thing about the fairy palace was that there you always met the prince.
This girl was so constituted that, except in the first flush of excitement incident to her entrance into this new sphere, she must have always some heart-warm thought, some little inner pleasure of her own, to make the larger one serve. Dosia knew now that she was to meet the true prince. This was the house he visited; all this outer circle of comfort was but the prelude to love—that mysterious and intangible love that made you happy ever after. She was glad that she had kept hold of that hand, and had not let herself be drawn away by lesser ties. Her day-dream was to bewitch and dazzle him, to compel him to her attraction; a dozen situations, based on that first idea of his recognition of her in some noble deed, occupied her happy mind; in all moments of extra exaltation she brought out the thought and played with it and hugged it to her. She had yet to learn how few things happen as we imagine them.
In the midst of her half-drowsy musings, the door behind her burst open; suddenly a big collie-dog bounded in. He was licking her cheeks, when a sharp whistle called him back, and the door was instantly closed again. Dosiaknew that the dog was Lawson’s. She sprang up and locked the door, but her dream had vanished. She had a tingling consciousness that she was to meet Lawson at dinner. She made up her mind to be very dignified and cool toward him; she rehearsed the manner in which her eyelashes would fall, the politely bored expression of her forced attention, the casual tips of her fingers as they touched his in the conventional handshake of greeting—all of which would emphasize the fact that he had now no particular interest for her, if, indeed, he had ever had any.
But, after all, he was not at dinner, which was a relief, and yet a disappointment: when you have sharpened your weapons, it is only natural to want to use them. Lawson did not appear the next day, nor the next. Once she heard him coming in very late at night, and in the morning he had gone before she breakfasted. A couple of times in the late afternoon, when the dog came trotting ahead through the hall, she had slipped aside, breathless, as from some peril escaped. It was the third day after her arrival that he suddenly made his appearance in the drawing-room, where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought the air too damp for Dosia.
She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she had prefigured, and could have flagellated herself for the color that she felt enveloping her from brow to throat under his cool, appraising eyes, as he bent over the piano as if to help her with her search.
“What do you wish to find?” he asked in a businesslike way. “Perhaps I can assist you.”
“Thank you, it isn’t necessary.”
She held her head at an unresponsive angle involuntarily, so that she might not see his face, which had struck her as unexpectedly younger and better-looking than hitherto.
“I see that my sister has fitted up a little music-room for you. Have you done much practicing there yet?”
“Some.”
“You are not homesick in your new quarters?”
“No.”
“Let me hold that portfolio for you.” He interposed a dexterous hand. “Oh, don’t thank me—you see, if you drop it, courtesy will oblige me to pick up all the music. This is the first time we’ve met since you have been in the house; I’ve been so patient that I deserve more than to have little cold, hard monosyllables thrown at me.”
“Patient!”
“Haven’t I seen you slip out of the way when you thought I was coming? I’m accustomed to the phenomenon.” The lightness of his tone did not hide the bitter strain under it. “Really, I’m not lacking in perception. I wished to give you time to get inured to the sad fact that I live here; and you need not have changed the time for your lessons last week, for I have no regular time for my daily exodus at present. If youwillkeep your head so persistently turned away, you might as well utilize the position. Play me something.”
“No, you play for me,” returned Dosia, glad of the chance to divert his attention from her.
“I might play ‘Greeting,’ since I’m not going to get any.”
He seated himself on the piano-bench she vacated, andplayed a few strains absently; there was that in the low, sweet chords among which his fingers strayed that could not but enchain. She forgot her aloofness to listen. Presently he said:
“Who is my rival?”
“What do you mean?” She started up, and stood with both arms resting on the lower end of the grand piano, staring at him.
“I could not think that blush was for me—that beautiful color that stole over you when I came in. It couldn’t be for me, when you have avoided me so pointedly. So I concluded, of course, that it was either the reflection from that brick wall out there, or was called forth by the thought of my rival.”
“I will not say that it was the brick wall,” said Dosia, yielding to the light, heady spirit he always roused in her, with, also, the little under-knowledge of her secret dream.
“Then I will not say it was the rival,” said Lawson. He added in a lower tone: “And I wouldn’t give it up to any rival; I saw it—it was mine.”
“You claim a great deal,” returned Dosia, wishing that she had the strength of mind to go and leave him, yet loath to lose a moment of this converse.
He shook his head as he answered gently: “No, you are mistaken there; I claim nothing. I have no rights—only privileges. I hope it’s going to be my privilege to have a little of your charming society in the next few days. I shall be at home, perforce; I’ve lost my position.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Dosia, with her quick sympathy. He raised one hand deprecatingly, while the other still weaved in and out in a pianissimo accompaniment.
“Sorry? For me? Oh, that’s not the thing to say, at all. You should condemn my inability to keep the place.”
“Why do you talk like this?” asked Dosia, with a pained feeling.
“Why do you run when you see me coming?” He flashed a quizzical glance at her.
“I don’t,” she began to say, but her words trailed off into an inarticulate murmur.
He had played a chord or two more to her silence before he stopped to lean forward and say:
“Why did you avoid me on the train? You need not trouble yourself to answer. Some kind person had warned you against being too polite to me—and you took the warning like a good little girl. It has been borne in upon me quite a number of times that I do not exactly command respect in this community. I assure you that I know my place.”
“But, oh, why don’t youmakepeople respect you?” cried Dosia. “Why don’t you make them? If you really try—oh, if I were a man, I wouldn’t sit quietly and say such things. You can do anything if you really try.”
“Can you?” He smiled with indulgence at her copy-book wisdom. “Well, perhaps you can, if there’s sufficient impetus to the effort. There really isn’t with me. When I was a boy—you’ll tire yourself if you stand up any longer. Come and sit over here by the fire.”
She followed half mechanically to the sofa on which he arranged the cushions for her, seating himself in the other corner, where he leaned forward, looking, not at her, but at the fire. His personality was so strong that each inchthat lessened the distance between her and that lithe, sinewy figure and the dark Oriental face brought a corresponding thrill of magnetism to Dosia—a subtle excitement which drew her into its spell. The confusion which had clouded her at first was gone; she felt luminously clear, in preparation for some great moment of confidence, in which her mission would be to help and sustain. She broke the silence presently to say, with a sweet and halting diffidence, through which her earnestness showed:
“I want you to tell me. You began to say—I want to know about when you were a boy.”
“When I was a boy I made a wrong start. Heaven knows, it wasn’t my fault! I was good enough before that—religiously inclined!” He leaned forward and struck a log with one of the fire-irons, sending a shower of sparks flying upward. “Where do you think I learned half the bad I know? At a camp-meeting! But I won’t go back to the past—it’s a mistake. Only, I came here literally ‘on suspicion.’”
“Yes,” said Dosia, with her clear spirit-voice; “and you tried to work up from under it.”
Lawson dropped his chin into his hands, looking moodily ahead. “I’m afraid not always. Sometimes the contrary.”
“Oh, oh,” breathed Dosia, in a whisper.
“If you want me to tell you the truth—! Your relatives are quite right in ordering you to avoid me. There has never been anybody, you see, to really care whether I kept straight or not.”
“Your sister?”