“Yes, she seemed nice enough; she’s pretty—a little stupid, perhaps.”
“Oh, poor Dosia!” said Lois, “stupid! I should think she might have been, after all she had gone through. But then, you’re so used to my cleverness!” She looked up at him with provocative eyes, into which he smiled faintly, in recognition of what was expected of him; then he said, with a sudden appealing change of tone, “I’mverytired, Lois.”
She kissed him good night tenderly, with magnanimous concession to his unresponsiveness; there was no room for her in his thoughts to-night, and she had been so longing to see him! But she would tell him all about it to-morrow.
Justin laid his head upon the pillow, but his eyes burned into the darkness; there was a proud and bitter disappointment at his heart, even while reason adjusted his losses to their proper place. Before him in disagreeable force came the face of Leverich, and it was not the face of a man to whom one would care to make excuse or from whom one would challenge reproof; he could see the heavy jowl, the piercing eyes, the half-pompous, half-shrewd expression of one who respected nothing but success. This tangle up of the machinery, unusual and costly in its parts and appointments—Heaven only knew what far-reaching complications the delay of its repair might occasion! Justin had seen only too well in others how a false step at the first may count.
Whether or not Dosia and the typometer were united in their destinies, they had at least one thing in common—they were both embarked upon perilous ways.
Joseph Leverich, however, proved unexpectedly kind and sympathetic when Justin approached him on the latter’s return from the West. Justin had written to him, and then had been incidentally reënforced by the assistance of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. Bullen, the foreman, was versed in practical knowledge of the machinery, and how to go to work about repairs; different portions had to be sent for to all parts of the country. Justin pored over catalogues, and checked off and figured, and tried to find ready-made substitutes wherever he could for those they ordinarily manufactured for the typometer. Here Cater, who had worked up gradually into the manufacturing of his own machine, was of great use.
“You never can find anything just as you want it,” he conceded, encouragingly, to Justin, “but you can whittle off here and there, and make it do. I had to get along that way at first. You can manage pretty well, only there isn’t any real certainty to it. I got sort of weary”—he pronounced it “weery”—“of sending for steel bars to fit, and then getting a consignment of ’em just two sizes too large, with a polite note saying that they were out of what I wanted, but thought it was best, at any rate, to send me what they had. You don’t want to buck up against that kind of thing too often—not for your own good. SoI started up the machinery, and even that goes back on you sometimes.”
“Mine has,” said Justin grimly.
“Oh, I don’t mean that way—it’s in the way it turns out the stuff. You get so cussed mi-nute nothing seems quite right to you. You get kinder soured even on the material in the rough; the grain is wrong in this, and that hasn’t been worked sufficient, and that t’other weighs too light.”
“How long do you guarantee the typometer for?”
“For a year.”
“We stake out ours for two,—go you one better,—but it’s all rot. You can’t guarantee nothin’ in this world; I know that isn’t grammar, but it kinder seems to mean more’n if ’twas. You can’t guarantee nothin’, not unless you could have the making of the raw material, and then you couldn’t. And you can’t guarantee your workmen, especially when you have to keep changing; I reckon human imperfection’s got to step in somewhere. Talk of skilled labor! That’s what takes the blood out of a man, the everlasting wrench of trying to get ‘skilled labor’ that is skilled. Some of it is so loose-jawed it can’t even chew straight.”
“You’re a pessimist,” said Justin, smiling.
The other broke into a responsive grin.
“Yes, I reckon that’s so; but I don’t even guarantee to be that, steady. Sometimes I get kinder mushy and pleasant, and think the world ain’t a closed-up oyster,—Shakespeare,—but just nice soft cream-cheese that’s ready to be spooned up when you want it. Those are the sort of spells a man’s got to look out for, or he’s likely to find himselfup against the rocks, without even an oyster-shell in sight.”
“That’s a bad position,” said Justin, and Cater nodded confirmatively. After a moment he said:
“Well, I’ll guaranteethat; I’ve been there.” As he was going, he asked: “How’s Miss Dosia? Pretty well shook up, I suppose.”
“Oh, she’s all right now,” said Justin. “She’s been resting for a couple of days. You must come and see her; she will be glad to see a face from home.”
“I reckon I’ll wait awhile,” said Cater, “till a face from home’s more of a novelty. She ain’t hankering for a sight of mine now.” And, indeed, Dosia, on being informed of the prospect, showed no great enthusiasm. Balderville and the people there were so far away in the past that she had lost connection with them.
And, after all, Leverich met Justin’s explanation cordially.
“Oh, you couldn’t help a thing like that,” he said. “Don’t know yet how the fire started, do they? Accidents are bound to occur when you least look for them. The loss was fully covered, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I’m glad the orders came in, anyway. Just bluff those fellows off a bit—tell ’em you’ve got a lot more orders on andthey’vegot to wait; that’s the way to do it.”
“Oh, yes, I know that; the only thing I want is to be sure, myself, when the orders can be filled. I’m trying to get the machinery at work as soon as possible, and we’re sending all over the country for what we need. Cater—he’s the manufacturer of the timoscript, across the street, hastold me of a place where they make small steel bars such as we use. I’ve brought the catalogue with me. I sent for a consignment of them yesterday; Bullen says they’ll do.”
“Yes, that’s all right,” said Leverich. “Oh, you’ll get along, you’ll get along! I knew you wouldn’t sit down and wait until I came home to get on your feet. Don’t mind drawing on us for extra money if you need it—and we want to get in for the export trade. What do you think of this?” He took some papers out of his desk and began explaining them to Justin, who listened attentively before making suggestions. His mind, although not unusually quick, was singularly clear and comprehensive; he brought to Leverich’s aid, if not the intelligence of the expert, something which is often harder to get, and which Leverich was experienced enough to appreciate at its full value—the intelligence which sees the matter from the standpoint of the big outer world, and not only from the inner radius of a little circle. Justin’s vision was not, as yet, impeded by the technicalities and preconceived opinions which often obstruct the fresh point of view even in very clever men whose talent it is to see clearly.
“We haven’t made any mistake in getting you,” he said to Justin, as they parted.
The belated fifty dollars were carried to Lois that night, with a subdued joy in the glad provision of more to come. They were still to live on as little as they could, but the idea of the limit stretched to include those extra fives and tens whose expenditure was in the interest of true economy.
For a few days after her arrival Theodosia had kept her bed, in a reaction from the strain of the journey thatmade her too weak to care to do anything but lie in a half-drowsing and peaceful condition, hearing the sound of the children’s voices as if they were very far off. Lois brought up the dainty meals herself, and talked the little talk women use on such occasions, and at four o’clock each afternoon Zaidee appeared with a tiny lacquered tray on which stood an egg-shell cup filled with fragrant tea, and a biscuit, and watched Dosia, as she ate and drank, with benignant satisfaction. The younger Reginald was still afraid and was lured near her bedside only to rush off again; but with Zaidee there was a loving comradeship.
It was well that Dosia had even lost interest in Mr. Barr’s call the next afternoon, for he did not come, and afterwards she grew ashamed that she had harbored the interest at all. Mr. Sutton, after sending more flowers, had departed for Boston.
But, after this convalescence, by the end of the week Dosia emerged, eager, alert, with pink cheeks and gleaming eyes, having passed through some subtle transformation, and bent on pleasure. She was rather silent, indeed, except when carried away by sudden excitement, but she was rapturously happy at the prospect of a concert and a card-party and a large bazaar to be given soon; the concert and the bazaar were both for charity, and she was already engaged to serve at the flower-booth in the latter; there was to be dancing after the closing of both entertainments.
Clothes were the first requisite, after a definite arrangement had been made to begin the music lessons in two weeks’ time. Every little preparation was a source of delight to Dosia, who thought Lois wonderful as a designer and adapter of fashions suitable to her purse, and the older woman threw herself into this work with a sort of fierce ardor.
Zaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfactionZaidee watched Dosia with benignant satisfaction
Dosia had never seen so much ready money spent in her life, and had never heard so much talk about it—why should she, in a place where no one bought anything, where long-outstanding bills for tiny sums were paid for mostly in lumber, or chickens, or cotton? Here the price of daily living and clothing and amusements was one of the stock topics in the intimate round of suburban dwellers. Women came to visit her cousin Lois who at times made it their sole subject of conversation, incidentally submitting the very garments they wore to appraisal, for the pleasure of springing an unexpected price in her face like a jack-in-the-box, at which she was to jump admiringly. Lois declaimed against the habit, even while she sometimes fell a victim to it, and Dosia found herself drawn into the same ways, after a delightful revel in shopping for new clothes with Aunt Theodosia’s money. The chief requisite in any article bought was that it should look to be worth more than was paid for it.
What most impressed Dosia in the big city was, not the size of it, nor the height of the buildings, nor the magnificence of the shops—she accepted these wonders, indeed, with the provoking acquiescence which dwellers in outlying sections of the country display when confronted with the reality they have seen so often depicted. It was the crowd, the rush of the people, the tense expression on the faces, that struck her with amazement; everyone looked in grim haste to get somewhere, and forged ahead untiringly with set and definite purpose, as if there were not aminute to lose. Dosia had been used to sauntering aimlessly, and to seeing everyone else saunter. There was no hurry at Balderville, except in Northern people on their first arrival, and they soon lost it. Dosia clung to Lois’ arm on their first excursion, but the next time she suddenly dropped the arm and forged ahead breathlessly, being caught, as she was crossing a street, by a policeman just in time to escape being run over by an electric car. When Lois came up to her, horrified and indignant, the girl was laughing in wild exhilaration.
“Oh, it’s such fun!” she said. “I’m going to walk like the other people after this; but I’ll stop when I get to the crossings, so you needn’t mind.” People turned around to look at the pretty girl with the hair blown back from her face, standing still in the street and laughing. The excitement was all part of the first intoxication of the new life.
In the intervals of going to town, there were calls to be received, some from married women, and some from young girls who were asked especially to meet Dosia, and who expressed pleasure that she was to spend the winter with them. She was asked to join a book club and a card club, and to pour tea at the next meeting of the Junior Guild—proceedings that at the first blush appeared radiantly festive. It was understood that she was to be of the inner circle.
When the other functions took place, Dosia was a success both at the concert and the bazaar; a score of youths were introduced to her, with whom she laughed and chatted and promenaded and danced; she danced every time. The society of a new place is apt to appear extraordinarilyattractive until one begins to resolve it into its component parts, when it is seen to differ but little from that one has hitherto known. Of these dancing youths, Dosia was yet to realize that half of them were younger even than she; some who seemed to take a great fancy for her were the bores whom all the other girls got rid of, if possible; others were just a little below the grade of real refinement; the really nice fellows were not there at all, with the exception of a stray few, and those who were attendant on their fiancées. Just at present the rhythm of the music and the joy of motion were all in all to Dosia. Her honest and artless pleasure shone so plainly from her face that for the moment it was a compelling attraction in itself—for the moment, as neither good looks, nor honesty, nor the artlessness of joy in one’s own pleasure, serve as a power of fascination: it takes a subtler quality, combined of both sympathy and reserve—something always given, something always withheld.
This happiness of healthy youth, which as yet depended on no individual note, could last but such a brief time! When she looked back upon it, it seemed like a little sunny, transfigured place that somebody else had lived in—the Dosia who was just glad.
Lois watched her enjoyment, half preoccupied, yet smilingly, pleased with the girl’s prettiness and success. Dosia thought, “How kind she is!” and yet, when another woman came to her and said, with warm impulsiveness, “My dear child, it’s a pleasure to look at you!” she felt that she had now the one thing she had missed.
She went to the last evening of the bazaar clad in a floating blue gown that matched her eyes. The curve ofher arms, bare to the elbow, the way the tendrils of her hair fell across her forehead, her sudden dimpling smile, the glad, unconscious motions of her beautiful youth, would have made her, to those who loved, the personification of darling maidenhood, with that haunting tinge of pathos which is the inheritance of the woman-child.
She sold more flowers than any other girl at the bazaar that night, and there she met Mr. Sutton, who had, indeed, called upon her, but at a time when she was out. This guaranteed man was rather short, stocky, and common-place-looking, with a large, round, beardless face, and a long, newly shaven upper lip. But his appearance made no difference; Dosia’s radiant happiness flowed over on him with impartial delight, and if she sold many flowers, it was he who bought most of them, presenting them to her again afterwards, so that one corner of the room was heaped up with her spoils, and her arms were full of roses. She trailed around the crowded room with him in her blue gown, as he had insisted on her advice in buying, and received gifts of books and candy in the interests of organized charity. It was like being in the Arabian Nights to have inconsequent gifts showered upon one in this way, but she succeeded in dissuading him from offering her a large green and pink flowered plaque of local art, and was relieved when he gave it to the lady who had it for sale.
“A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden,” he said apologetically. “Each lady makes me promise—weeks beforehand—to come and buy from her especial table. If they would only have something Icouldwant,”—he looked at her humorously,—“it would be easy enoughto keep my word. Why don’t they ever sell things a man can use? But look for yourself, Miss Linden—it’s charity to help me out.” He paused irresolutely by a yellow-draped table. “Might you like some sewing-bags, now, or this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of these—plush arrangements?”
“No!” said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, “I mightn’t.”
“Or a doll, now?” He had strayed a step farther on. “Would you like a doll for Mrs. Alexander’s little girl, and some of these charming toys?”
“Oh, howlovelyof you!” said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent gratitude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon the scene. George Sutton’s seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied Spanish in a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his life to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his sentimental remarkshad been confided by one girl to another. But further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it permanently on one person. George Sutton’s heart performed the pleasing miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had never made a bad bargain.
Dosia’s grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time until the dancing began.
Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn, without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons or of lambs could havepropitiated the gods who presided over the Terpsichorean art, Mr. Sutton’s domestic altars would have been reeking with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little boy.
It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever the peculiar effect of being unlike other people—his overcoat hung carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact that he had lingered in her thought at all.
He had been the subject of Lois’ conversation on one of the afternoons of Dosia’s convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about him, she was met by the casual answer, “Oh, everybody knows what Lawson is.” He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he carried no weight, and there seemedto be social limitations which it was an understood thing that he was not to pass.
Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little country town of his birth with a past such as places of the kind are too fatally apt to fasten upon the boys who grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, Heaven only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barr’s idle youth had been subject; and nobody in his new home had cared to hear. Scandal may be interesting, but one instinctively avoids filth. It was an understood thing, when he first came to Woodside, that his brother-in-law, Joseph Leverich, had lifted him out of “a scrape” in response to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy back with him to get him away from village temptations and substitute the more bracing conditions of city life, where entertainment that was not vicious could be had.
The experiment had apparently worked well; in the eight years which Lawson Barr had passed in Woodside, no one had anything bad to tell of him. He was more inclined to the society of men than of women, and shared the imputation of being fond of what is called “a good time”; but he was never seen really under the influence of liquor. Shy in general company at first, he became rather a favorite afterwards in a certain way; he was fond of sports, and was very kind to women and children; he was also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the piano when he was in the mood; he was one of those gifted people who can play, after their own fashion, on any instrument. When he felt pleasantly inclined, no one was more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He had become engaged to a girl in good standing, after asummer flirtation. The girl had come there on a visit, and the engagement lasted only until her return and the revelation of his prospects to parental inspection.
For Lawson never had any prospects—or, at least, they never solidly materialized. He never kept his positions for more than a few months at a time. There was always a different reason for this, more or less unimportant on each occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers whom he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated by his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic in finding new openings for him, ready to champion hotly his merits against that most galling of all criticism, which consists in the simple statement of adverse facts.
“You will never be able to make anything out of him,” was a sentence which his relays of friends were sure to hand on to one another.
One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep the golf-grounds in order—a position, however, which he filled in such a well-bred manner, and with so many niceties of consideration for everyone’s comfort, that to have him around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, and the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket once more and started going in to town mornings as one of them.
Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the village, and part of the time he stayed with the Leverichs; rumor said that Leverich alternately turned him out or welcomed him, as he lost or renewed patience, but the relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always appeared to be friendly.
Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing to forget the youthful faults of the handsome, clever boy, and let him in on probation to the outer edges of it, it was a singular fact that after all these years of apparent respectability he had made no further progress.
There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences with a certain inner purity untouched; with an added reverence for goodness, and a strength of character all the greater for the sheer effort of retrieval; whose eyes are forever ashamed when they look back on the sins that were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there had been, perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison lodged, to a deterioration, however delicate, of the whole tissue. It is strange—or, rather, it is not strange—that, in spite of respectability of life, with nothing whatever that was tangible to contravene it, this should have been thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what felt of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one he does, and the combined judgment of the members of an intelligent suburban community is very keen as to character, no matter how it differs in regard to actions. The standard of morality in such a section is high—it may indulge occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a lower scale, but in social relations the lesser order must go. “Shadiness” is damning. Lawson was not exactly “shady,” but he might be. No girl was ever supposed to fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. Strangers whom he impressed favorably always asked, asDosia did, “Why, what has hedone?” And received the same reply Lois gave her: “Oh, nothing.”
“Isn’t he—nice?”
“Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He can’t seem to make a living; I don’t know why—he’s clever enough. There’s really nothing against him though, except that he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that when he goes away on trips he—drinks. But Justin wouldn’t like me to say it; he hates to have people talked about in this way. Still—it’s just as well that you should know all about him.”
“Oh, yes,” said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, yet in reality mystified. She felt at once indignant at the imputations thrown on Mr. Barr, and yet a little ashamed of having liked him, as something in bad taste.
As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped that he wouldn’t come and speak to her at all; but the hope was vain, for, without apparently seeing her, he made his way through the room, at the cessation of the dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers.
It is in one of George MacDonald’s stories that Curdie, the hero, tests everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which unconsciously reveals the true nature to his magic sense; claws and paws and hoofs and the serpent’s writhe are plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia involuntarily tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand that had held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction was strong within her that some day she would meet and recognize her helper by that remembered touch, if in no other way. Mr. Barr’s hand was smooth, with long fingers,and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away quickly, with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met his coolly appraising eyes, that she had done something school-girlish and ill-bred.
“You did not come to see me, after all,” she said, when the first greeting was over, and could have bitten out her tongue for saying it.
“I regretted very much not being able to,” he replied, in a tone of conventional politeness. “I went West the next day, and have only just returned. You have been enjoying yourself, I hope?”
“Oh, immensely,” said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; “I couldn’t have had a better time, possibly.” Her eyes roved toward the people in front of them with studied inattention, although she was strangely conscious in every tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side.
“You have been to town, I suppose?” he pursued.
“Yes, indeed, several times.”
“Would you care to come out in the corridor and walk?” he asked abruptly, as the music struck up again. “I’m not in evening dress, you see; I only returned from my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer to dance?” he added.
“Oh, I prefer to dance!” said Dosia, with the first natural inflection her voice had possessed in speaking to him.
“Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow coming over for you. Good night.”
“You are not going to leavenow?” exclaimed Dosia, with disappointment too quick to be concealed.
“In a few moments; I may not see you again.” He did not offer his hand this time, but bowed and was gone.
It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, and Dosia’s feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while his mother lamented her husband’s prolonged absence to everyone who passed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose:
“One more waltz—just one more! This is the best part of the evening. Lawson—Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, don’t say you’re too tired—play!”
Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosia’s waist, looking questioningly down at her.
“I think I’d better go,” she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancing—yet she was young, too. But at that moment the music struck up again—there was a crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found herself gliding into motion ere she wasaware. She knew before she looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the keys, seemed remote and sad.
The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood massed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes. Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the stars she swung in that long, entrancing strain—from the flowers to the stars! From the stars—ah, whither went that flight of ecstasy—this endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again now—back to the stars; beyond, beyond—oh, whither?
A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. It brought Dosia to the earth, awake and trembling, with parted lips and panting breath. But her eyes had the wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the flowers, as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had slipped unnoticed from her hand, she walked across thefloor with Billy. Her loveliness, as she smiled, brought a pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so plainly of the evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the future possession of some dearest lover, who could never know his loss.
“I hope I haven’t let you stay too long, Dosia,” she said practically, and Justin hurried her into her wraps, after she had given Billy the rose he asked for. Everybody was leaving at once in couples, laughing and chattering, with the lights turned out behind them as they went.
The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with Justin and Lois was a side view of Lawson Barr going down the stone steps, carrying in his arms the child who had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The light head rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, voluble in thanks, with the child’s cap in her hand.
Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence known locally as “going to Stevens’”; in other words, he was a daily attendant at the institute of that name, situate on the heights of Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied fitfully as he journeyed.
Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her William’s ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, Billy was ayoung scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of circumstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his mother’s exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had had the first convincing “shy”; she had complained untiringly to parents by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadn’t been the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mother’s attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow.
The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently experiencing the tender passion since the age of seven, she regarded only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude boys.
With added years Billy’s outward demeanor had changed in his daily journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare;he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat, or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers one day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him, or whether he was “up against it again” at Stevens, his replies were unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him.
The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose and a dark mustache—the nose and the mustache turned sideways much oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and Billy swore under his breath.
When the train had rolled into the station, he went with the other passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house to see—yes, they were going over the same ferry together, he still bending toward her as they walked, she with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, “Thegall of him!” and walked away to the humiliating trolley which showed that he was still “going to Stevens’.” If he had been out of bondage, he would have been quick to follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate duet.
It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain days his accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected that he no longer whistled cheerily all the time he was dressing, but only when he heard her foot upon the stairs; and although he still chaffed his admiring sisters at dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the jesting that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. He found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. His mother brought him pills which he refused to take, towering above her—she was a little woman—tense and aloof. When she taxed him with having something on his mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her go no further.
“It is nothing to do with myself,” he conceded, with the spirit of a man looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The woman in her bowed to it as she went down-stairs, with pride in him rampant in her heart, to deliver her report to the two sisters waiting below.
The Snow family had been settled in the town from its beginning as a suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow having died—after losing money largely on his real-estate investments there—twelve years later, when Billy was an infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in the place, rich and poor, and were consequently regardedsomewhat in the light of a directory; the woman by the day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man or boy could always be achieved by applying to them, for they had an invariable acquaintance with respectable persons temporarily forced into filling these positions. They themselves, while adding to their own finances in various ways, neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their affairs could interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall nearly level with the street; and the little low-ceiled parlor and sitting-room, with their narrow doorways and slightly uneven floors, were crowded with large mahogany and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, from the cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the ornamental hanging calendar of the past season. In the autumn the ladies potted plants with such accumulative energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and spikes and flat blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly where to sit without encroaching perilously on these; Billy’s friends always dropped first into a certain chair and rocked into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on the marble-topped table behind.
The Snows had the recognized position in society of being Asked to Everything. When they went to entertainments, it was in the dark, quiet garments of every-day life, or the one often remodeled state robe belonging to each, irrespective of what other people wore. Their circumstances and their birth were too well known to need pretense.
Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She wastwenty-seven, tall like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer young—as a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for sixteen. She was her brother’s favorite, secretly aiding and abetting him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in view of his height and large experience.
The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman, dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary fence—incidents of note in themselves without further connection. She seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had worked hard for her mother in her early youth—that little mother who now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the roomfrom her interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: “William won’t tell me what’s the matter, but I know it’s something to do with that girl at the Alexanders’. Willie is growing up so fast!”
“Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden,” said Miss Bertha, in comfortable corroboration. “That’s been going on for some weeks.”
“Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps she’s snubbed him in some way.”
“No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, it’s just being in love that upsets him.”
“Yes, I really think that’s all.”
Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth. The daylight was beginning to go.
“He’s got a rose she gave him,—never mind how I know,—and he keeps it wrapped up in tissue”—she pronounced it “tisher”—“paper in his waistcoat pocket. He leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his clothes. And Ada says—you know that picture in the magazine that we all said looked so like Miss Linden? He’s got it in a little frame. Ada says that it tumbles out from underneath his pillow once in a while when she’s taking the covers off; I suppose the child puts it there at night and forgets it in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again when she makes up the bed, as if she’d overlooked it. He never says anything, and of course she doesn’t, either.”
“I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously,” said the mother, alarmed. She had known all this before,but it was a fashion of the family to talk over and over what they already knew. “Ihopeshe will not take him seriously.”
“Mother! They’re both so young.” Ada, who had been leaning forward with her face in her hands and her chin upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke for the first time.
“Oh, that’s very well!” Mrs. Snow tossed her head as one with experience. “He is, of course, nothing but a mere boy at nineteen, but a girl of twenty is years older. When a girl is twenty, she goes in society with women ofanyage. I was married myself at eighteen—not that I should wish either of my daughters to do so.”
“Well, you can feel safe about that, mother,” interpolated Ada.
“William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not blame any girl for being somewhat captivated by him; I should be sorry if Miss Linden allowed her affections to be engaged. She may not know that his career is mapped out before him. William will not be in a position to marry before he is thirty-six. William is——”
“The people are coming from the train,” interposed Miss Bertha, waving back one thin hand to stop her mother’s discourse—which she could have repeated backward—and scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across the street.
“Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, come here. Mrs. Leverich has on her new furs—the ones her husband gave her. Don’t they make her look stout? There are the Brentons, I think that’s a bag of coffee he’s carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square ends—perhapsshe’sbeen buying corsets; if not, it mustbe a bottle of whisky. And there—who is that? Oh, I thought it was Mr. Alexander in a new coat; of course it’s too early for him—they say he’s been making money hand over hand lately. And here comes—why it’s George Sutton! Ada, Ada, bow! he’s looking. He sees us waving—ah!”
There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared on the cheeks of both sisters.
The mother murmured apprehensively, “They sayheis devoted to Miss Linden,” but neither answered. Ada had benefited, like the other girls, by his attentions, she had been given candy and flowers and made one in his theater-parties, but it was the secret conviction of all three women that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his real devotion to Ada. The others were just a circle—she was the particular one; and Heaven only knows how many girls in this circle shared the same conviction. His smile and nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that blotted out all his preference for Miss Linden.
“You had better pull down the shade now,” said Mrs. Snow, after a few minutes. “It’s time to light the lamp.”
“No, wait a moment—there’s another train in.” Miss Bertha’s eyes pierced the gloom. “The Carpenter boys, those new people in the Farley house, and that’s all. No, there’s somebody ’way behind—I declare, it’s Miss Linden! She’s ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at first. I wonder she didn’t come on the train ahead. Who can that be with her? Why—” there was a pause. “I suppose he must have just happened to get off with her at the station,” said Miss Bertha in an altered voice.
“Oh, yes; I’m sure that’s it,” said Ada.
“What is all this that I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr?” asked Justin abruptly, one evening when he and his wife were at home alone together, a rather unusual occurrence now. Either he was out, or there was company, or Dosia was sitting with them by the table on which stood the reading-lamp. Just now she was staying overnight with Miss Torrington, at the other end of the town, “across the track,” practicing for a concert.
Justin had dropped his collar-button that morning in the process of dressing, and the small incident was productive of unforeseen results. The hunt for it had delayed him to a later train and a seat by Billy Snow.
“What is this I hear about Dosia and Lawson Barr? They say she has been going in with him on the express nearly every morning this month. She may have been coming out with him, too, for all I know.”
“Who says so?” asked Lois, startled, but contemptuous.
“Billy, for one.”
“I do not see what business it is of his.”
“That hasn’t anything to do with it, Lois. As a matter of fact, the boy wouldn’t have told me at all if I hadn’t happened to sit with him to-day; he’s heard plenty of remarks on it, though, and he’s cut up about it. They satin front of us, some seats down, entirely oblivious of everybody; it might have been their private car. It gave me a start, I can tell you, when Billy said it was not the first time. Has she said anything to you about it?”
“Yes, I think she has mentioned once or twice that she had seen him on the train; I know he brought her home one afternoon when she was late. But I haven’t paid any particular attention; and, after all, there’s no harm in it.”
“Oh, no; there’s noharm, if you put it that way—only she mustn’t do it. You know what I mean, Lois. Dosia ought not to want to be with him.”
“I suppose he comes and talks to her, and she doesn’t know how to stop him.”
“Perhaps.”
“And you sent her out in his care that first night,” said Lois. She felt unbelieving and combative; Lawson was so unattractive to her that she could not conceive of his being otherwise to any girl.
“Of course; and I would do so again under the same circumstances—that was an emergency. But that’s very different from making a practice of it. You must tell Dosia, as long as she can’t see it herself. Let her get her lesson changed to another hour and that will settle the thing. Does she see much of Barr at other places?”
“No more than anybody else does; of course, he is more or less around. But she knowsjustwhat he is like, Justin; I told her all about him the first thing, and she hears it from everybody. I am sure you are mistaken about her liking his society, she told me once that it always made her uncomfortable when he was near her. I really don’t think you need be afraid of anything serious.”
“All right, then. Probably a hint will be sufficient; but don’t forget to give it, Lois. She is very much of a child in some things.”
“Yes, she is,” said Lois, resignedly.
This having Dosia with them had turned into one of those burdens which people sometimes ignorantly assume under a rose-colored impulse. It had seemed that it must be necessarily a charming thing to have a young girl in the house. But to have a young girl who was always practicing on the piano, to the derangement of Reginald’s sleep or to the inconvenience of visitors in the little drawing-room, one who had to be specially considered in every plan, and whose presence took away all privacy from Lois’ daily companionship with Justin, was a doubtful pleasure. Even this rainy evening with Justin and herself cozily placed together was, after all, not hers, but invaded, if not with the presence, at least with the disturbing thought of Dosia.
There were all the little grievances which sound so infinitesimal, and yet count up to so much when sympathy is lacking. Dosia had lived in a Southern atmosphere and in a home which had no regular rule. She invariably wanted to play with the children at the wrong time, and yet perhaps did not always offer to take care of them when it would have been a help. If Lois was busy when Justin came home at night, she would invariably find afterwards that Dosia had swiftly poured into his ears—in nervous loquacity at being alone with him—all the domestic happenings of the day, so that every remark that Lois made was answered by a “Yes; Dosia has already told me.” These slight threads, which Lois had treasured up fromwhich to spin a little web of interest for her beloved, would thus be broken off short. Dosia also had a fashion of ensconcing herself unthinkingly in Justin’s particular seat by the lamp, in which case he sat patiently and uncomfortably in an attitude out of the radius, or else went up-stairs to the untidy sitting-room to read by himself, leaving Lois, with her teeth on edge, to keep company perforce with Dosia, to whom he would not allow Lois to make protest, avowing that he was not inconvenienced at all. He had an unvarying kindness and sense of justice regarding the girl. But the family was like the bicycle of concert-hall fame, built for two, and this third person jarred its running qualities out of gear.
It was the night after Justin’s charge to her that Lois nerved herself to broach the subject of Lawson to Dosia, who was copying some music by the table. Both her hair and her dress were arranged with a little new touch of elegance, but there was a droop to the corners of her mouth that had not been there before—a suggestion of hardness or melancholy or defiance, it would have been difficult to say which.
Justin was getting ready to go out, and Lois could hear his footsteps as he walked up and down above. She hated to begin, and her very reluctance gave a chill tone to her voice as she said temporizingly, “Dosia, please don’t keep Reginald out so late again as you did this afternoon. It is too cold.”
“We only went to the post-office; he said he was warm.”
Dosia, who had generously curtailed her practicing to take the mother’s place, felt ill-used.
“I know; but it was too late for him. His feet were as cold as ice. I amsoafraid of croup.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dosia, in a low voice. “I won’t do it again.”
“Well, never mind that now.” Lois hesitated, and then took the plunge: “I want to speak to you about Lawson Barr, Dosia.”
Dosia’s color, which came and went so prettily when she spoke, always left her when she was really moved, or at the times when girls ordinarily blush. She turned pale now and her eyes became defiant, but she did not answer.
The other stumbled along, sorry and ashamed, as if she were the culprit:
“People have been commenting—I hear that he has been with you a great deal lately.”
“Where?” The girl’s voice was hard.
“On the train.”
“He went in to town with me twice last week, and twice the week before—yes, and yesterday. And he came out with me once.” She counted out the times as if they were a contravention. “I don’t see how I am going to help it if people speak to me, I can’ttellthem to go away.Idon’t want him to do it! Mr. Sutton took me over the ferry one day; was that commented on, too?”
There was a passion of tears in her voice, called forth by outraged modesty—and there is no modesty that feels itself more outraged than that of the girl who knows she has given some slight cause for reproof.
“Dosia, be reasonable,” said Lois, annoyed that her talk was being made so hard for her. “I know it’s horrid to be ‘spoken to,’ but Justin is very particular, and he feelsthat we are responsible for you. And, besides, you wouldn’t want it thought that you liked Lawson’s society. I am to go in to town with you to-morrow, and we will get the hour for your lesson changed.” She paused for some answer, but none came, and she went on: “I told Justin that he need not worry, there was no danger of your caring too much forLawson! That’s nonsense. Why, you know allabouthim, and just what he amounts to. But, of course, if you are seen with him——”
“You need not say any more. I never want to speak to him again!” said Dosia, strangling. She swept her things from the table and rushed up to her own room in a whirlwind of indignation and shame, scathed by the imputation in Lois’ tone. The bubble of her imagining of Lawson was pricked for the moment by it; it is hard to idealize what another despises. She felt herself as false to her own estimate of him as she had hitherto been to the public one.
She threw herself upon the bed face downward. Something that she had been unconsciously dreading had come upon her—the notice of her little world. Before it had been voiced to her by Lois she had persistently considered herself unseen. She cried out now that there was no occasion for her being “spoken to,” yet she knew with a deep acknowledgment that she had not been quite true to her highest instincts.
The exquisitely sensitive perception which is an inherent part of innocence was hers. The Dosia who at twelve could not be induced to enter a room when a certain man was in it, because she “did not like the way helookedat her,” had as unerring an instinct now as then; it was an instinct so deep, so interwoven with every pulse of her nature, thatto deny it ever so little was a spiritual hurt. She could not have told why certain subjects, certain joking expressions even, revolted her so that she shrank from them involuntarily. She could not have told why she knew there was something about Lawson different from the other men she had been accustomed to. Dosia not only knew nothing of the practice of evil, she knew nothing of life nor the laws of it; but it could never be said of her that she did not know when right bordered on wrong. She knew—and it would have been impossible for her not to have known—her slightest deviation from that shining road which can only be followed by white feet. Her first quick idea of Lawson as not the kind of man that she would ever want to marry still held good. Back of all this was the image of the true prince.
There are people whose natures we always feel electrically, a sensation which depends neither on liking nor on disliking, and which often partakes of both. When we meet them there is always a slight shock, a psychic tingling, a displacement of values, that makes us uncertain of our pathway; the colors seen in this artificial light are different from those seen by day. Barr affected Dosia thus. If he came into a room, she knew it at once; dancing or walking or talking with others, she felt his eyes upon her, disquieting her and making her conscious of his presence, so that she could not get up or sit down naturally. When he was not there, everything was flat and uninteresting in the withdrawal of this exciting disquietude. If she met his remarks cleverly, it gave her a delighted occupation for hours in recalling them; if she failed in repartee, and was “thick” and school-girlish, her cheeks would burnand the taste for life would leave her; she could hardly wait to see him again to retrieve herself. She was not in love with Barr, she was not even in love with love,—a fairly healthful process,—but she was in love with the excitement of his presence.
She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to seek her. After the night of the bazaar and that wondrous waltz, she had felt that he must fly to speak to her at the nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had played for her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She invented many excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp disappointment of which he was necessarily unconscious. As she met him casually at different places,—with the old quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar manner,—his lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over which she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she lived in was entirely of her own creation. In these last two months she had always an undercurrent of thought for him, whether she was practicing or sewing, or chaffing with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawson’s avoidance of her had come a childish, uncalculating’ impulse to attract. Dosia had not told the truth when she said that she could not help his speaking to her; she knew very well the morning he would have passed her by in the train, as usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,—he knew the place allotted to him,—but he accepted permission. When he sat down by her, she swiftly wished him away again; yet her heart beat under his cool glance—a glance which seemed to read her every thought. Theseinterviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, yet in which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious and stinging pleasure, like eating ice.
There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about Christmas-time and after—a delightful flare that burned up red and glowing, only to sink back gradually into the darkness of monotony. There was that fall into a hum-drum condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept later down-town, and the women had the usual influx of winter colds and minor maladies which interfere with planned festivities. The younger sort had engagements, individually and collectively, for “things in town,” either coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight with friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove Tuesday had fallen through.
The fairy glamour was already gone for Dosia. The personal note which she had missed at first was everything, and she found it nowhere but in Lawson. If she could have poured out her thoughts and feelings to Lois,—“talked things over,” girl-fashion,—if Lois had been her friend and lover—But Lois had no room for her; Dosia had learned to feel all the bitterness of the alien. And she was shy with the pleasant but self-sufficient women whom she met socially, and who were so intimate with one another; Dosia merely sat on the edge of conversations, so to speak, and smiled. She could not learn this assured fluency. The very children were hedged in from her by restrictions. To give up those little incidental meetings with Lawson was to give up the one silver string on which hung happiness, and yet—and yet—Dosia felt the stingof Lois’ matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him indescribably. All women look down upon a man who will allow himself to be despised. She had cherished an ideal of him as a man lonely, misunderstood, terribly handicapped by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable of good and noble things. She had thought——
“Dosia?”
“Well?”
“Will you shut your door? The light streams down here and keeps Reginald from going to sleep. He waked when you went up-stairs.”
Dosia rose and closed the door noiselessly; she would have liked to shut it with a bang. It was a climax. There seemed to be nothing that she could do in this house that was right! Her attitude had ceased to be only that of an alien, it was that of an antagonist; but it was also that of a lonely and unguarded child.