It was a look she knewIt was a look she knew
Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart beating with a rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. She was his, though she had been warned.
Warned—yes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world of chaperons and parents and guardians and people who knew!
It was the night of Mrs. Leverich’s grand ball. Dosia was “coming out.”
The preparations had been going on for the entire week since the drive. The great house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the floors waxed, the state silver brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand orders, to select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement that was made or thought of required discussion—what furniture was to be taken up in the attic and what left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, where the musicians were to take their stand; how many small tables would be needed for the serving of the supper that was to come from town. Leverich himself had said there was to be no expense spared, and he would see to the wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there had been a delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her own name on them, and tried to realize that this was indeed what Mr. Leverich called “her party.” He had insisted, at his wife’s suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her gown for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty thanks for his kindness. There was something about Mr. Leverich, with all his outer coarseness, that Dosia liked. When she spoke in a certain way, he never answered wrong, as his wife sometimes did; he understood.
Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her lover. After her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him at the breakfast to which she came down very late the next morning, she was relieved to hear that he had suddenly been called away earlier. He might not be back for a day or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring herself to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a matter of course by everyone else. But there had been a note from him, after the two days were up, postmarked from the city—a mere line that said only, “For the girl I love.”
“Will your brother be back for the party?” she asked Mrs. Leverich, trying to keep her color steady and ask the question casually.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” the sister answered readily. “He may be back at any minute now. He’ll be here on the day itself, for certain; he knows I want his help about some things.”
Without Lawson’s actual presence Dosia could fashion him into the man she loved, and pitch her own key of living higher. With that higher thought and her simple earnestness of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, more subtly sympathetic with others; she was no girl any longer, she said to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his eyes claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the thought. There was a strange tingling emotion in everything connected with him. Ah, he would be worthy—he must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence supplied him with the halo.
All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the Leverich house; it was impossible to overestimate its importance. Every woman was having a new dress made, orwas absorbingly renovating an old one, and every man was sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody was asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball was to be outside the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,—she had taken cold on the ride,—but it was to be one of Miss Bertha’s rare appearances in public; she was to chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former was to be one of the receiving party.
Dosia’s week had been one surging thought of Lawson, mixed with wild anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time on the eventful night he had not arrived.
“Girard is coming, you know, after all,” said Leverich, as they assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. “I met him in town to-day, and was lucky enough to get him. That’s the right man for you, Dosia.”
“For me!” Dosia laughed, with her rising color. “Mr. Leverich, you are always trying to find the right man for me. I don’t want him!”
“You haven’t met him yet,” said Leverich wisely. “He’s the only fellow I know that I’d be willing to have you marry. I told him you were waiting for him.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Dosia, in consternation.
“Now, don’t get excited,” said Leverich, smiling broadly. “I said he’d have to work to get you—that you weren’t the kind of a girl that came when she was beckoned to. Oh, I put your stock ’way up.”
He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. “No, I’ll confess! I didn’t say anything of the kind; I was just romancing. I did tell him he’d meet a pretty nice girl—you don’t mind that, do you?”
“You don’t deserve to be answered,” said Dosia. She went and hung over his chair caressingly for a moment before escaping from the room.
In spite of his recantation, the effect of having been offered to Mr. Girard remained the real situation—one of sudden and great intimacy. The thought of his coming to-night added to her happiness; it brought the deep pleasure inseparable from his name—it was as if something both calm and protecting had been added, like the comfortable presence of one who understood. He would sympathize, if he knew, with that high motive of duty which must uphold her, whether the glamour held or failed. He would know what it was to feel that you must be true.
As she went through the still unlighted upper hall, she came face to face with some one in an overcoat, a man who carried a valise.
“Lawson!” she whispered.
For one dreadful moment she saw him in that way she feared; shallow, insincere, unstable—was that all? Was there something indefinably odd, indefinably strange? Then she saw only the gaze that recalled everything—he loved her! That thrilling thought carried all before it; her pulses leaped to own him master, with a sudden lovely, trusting joy.
“No, no!” she whispered again, with falling eyelids, as he made a movement toward her. His lips touched her hair. “Not here! Some one is coming.”
“Later, then!” he murmured assentingly, with a gleaming eye, as she eluded him and ran down the corridor to her own room.
This was to be her ball, her ball! Her lover had come.Her dress lay on the bed, a white and airy thing; her white pearl-beaded slippers were below it on the floor. Every chair was piled high with dainty whiteness of some sort. Her dressing-table, with its candles and flowers, was like a shrine for her beauty. The mirror reflected her with loosened waves of hair and bare arms and feet, her bath-robe slipping from her shoulders. It reflected her again, fresh and gleaming, low-bodiced, short-skirted, and a-tiptoe in her pearly slippers; and again in filmy, trailing petticoats, and half-covered neck, sitting like a pictured marchioness of old in front of the dressing-table, in the shine of the candles, while Mrs. Leverich’s maid piled the fair hair high on her small head. And every few minutes there was a knock at the door, and a maid brought in a box of flowers, great, delicious bunches of red and pink and white roses, and sweet peas and lilies, and violets tied with yards of lustrous satin ribbon. Dosia held out her arms for them, the dear, fragrant, heavenly things, and hung over them, and buried her face in them, and kissed them, before she sent them down-stairs, with loving protest that she should have to be parted from them until she should follow. She had not so much as dreamed of this richness of flowers for her! It was because it was her ball, her ball! And her lover had come.
There was a noise of carriages driving up to the house—the intimate friends who came first. The musicians below were beginning to tune their instruments, and the twanging of the strings touched an intenser chord of exhilaration. The long-ago dance at the bazaar—was Dosia to have another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? For this was her ball—her ball, and the dance would be with Lawson as her lover. Her feet kept time to some fairy measure of her own.
Like a pictured marchioness of oldLike a pictured marchioness of old
Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white cloud enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in pale green satin, came into the room and clasped a little thread of pearls around the slender white throat before she went down-stairs.
Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but pale and cold; there was a sick look around her mouth. One or two girls ran in for a peep at the débutante. And was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent up word that they were all waiting for her. In a moment—Dosia would come in a moment. If they would leave her, she would be down in a moment. The music had struck up now, and swung into the preparatory strains of Lohengrin. Dosia would come in a moment.
As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone in her chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. Her spirit cried out that this instant could never come again; she wished to feel it, to know it, forever. The mirrors reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, as she leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... Then she opened the door and went down the hall to the stairs.
Dosia’s beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends on the soul within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. Never in her life would she look again as she did to-night, with that lovely, childlike joy of anticipation; deeper happiness might be hers, but never happiness of the same kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one shaded his eyes with his hand.
The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which led to a broad landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway of the brilliantly lighted drawing-room across the hall. In there were grouped Mrs. Leverich, Lois, the rest of the receiving party, and the Misses Snow, standing near a table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, their long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich was at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside him was George Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; at one side in the half-shadow of some palms was another man. Something in the turn of the shoulders was oddly familiar to Dosia—he moved suddenly, and for a second she stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her than it was followed by another: Where was Lawson?
“Here is our princess descending the stairs,” announced Mr. Sutton gallantly.
At that instant, as Dosia stood on the landing, with one slippered foot on the lower step, facing her little admiring world, somebody began to come down the flight at the side with hurrying, stumbling feet. It was Lawson in evening dress, his olive cheeks flushed, his eyes reckless. The men who were watching knew at once that, in common parlance, he was “not himself.” Dosia, her sweet eyes raised to meet his, only knew, with a quick, half-frightened thrill, that he looked strangely unnatural. He seemed to see no one but her, as he caught up to her, saying jovially:
“You can give me that other kiss now.”
Somebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling feetSomebody began to come down with hurrying, stumbling feet
Did his hand but touch her white shoulder in that suggestion of vulgar familiarity that branded her as with a hot iron in its scorching, blinding shame? She could not blush, the blood had all gone to her stricken heart and left her white as a snow wreath. Then Leverich sprang up the steps and took Lawson by the arm, dragging him forcibly back into the upper regions, as some of the guests began to descend. Dosia must go in, helpless, toward those staring faces. Would no one come to her aid? Justin? He had turned to speak to Lois. Billy Snow? His face was averted, his eyes on the ground. Bailey Girard, her helper once, the hero of her dreams, the man his friend had pledged for succor—Bailey Girard stood motionless.
It was George Sutton who came forward and, placing her hand in his arm, led her with old-fashioned courtesy to her place beside Mrs. Leverich. The whole incident had taken barely a moment. Dosia stood up, pale and graceful, artificially self-composed, greeting the many people who began to pour in, smiling above the enormous bouquet of bride roses that she held, and chatting in a high, thin voice. Her one immediate thought was that she must stand up straight, as if nothing had happened—stand up straight and talk.
“Has the girl no feeling?” thought Lois contemptuously. “Why, she did not even blush!”
Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling of death in the heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! What did those men think of her, or those women who saw? What could they think her like, to have given any man a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulder—he had asked her for a kiss. That was all. It was nothing and it was everything—something that could never be undone. Through the dancing, through the flirting, throughall the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. What had happened? It was nothing—and it was everything. Each effort for comfort brought with it that horrible, blinding shame to surge over her more and more, as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch.
How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly showed the people, how gay the scene! One partner after another claimed Dosia. She danced and danced, and did not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all that throng there was not one person whom she could call her friend. She fancied that people were whispering as she passed them. She had but one prayer—that the evening might end. She met Justin’s eyes from time to time; they looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, and she was right. Those who are responsible are squeamish as to the appearance of delicacy in the conduct of a young girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, yet there was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such a thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed them all in an awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich briefly, “She had better come back to us at once,” and Leverich had answered, “Well, perhaps it would be best.”
William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming into the ball-room at all. He stood, instead, leaning against a doorway, and watched everyone who approached Dosia; his brows were lowering, his attitude aggressive. He saw that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, bent solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glassof water, and William saw that she had lapsed momentarily on a corner divan by his sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful eyes raised to the elder woman, but he did not hear the younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice:
“Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so glad to be here with you!”
“Thank you, my dear.”
“I’m homesick,” said Dosia, with a white smile. “Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so homesick!” Her fancy had leaped passionately to the security of the untidy cottage in the South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it were really the loving home she longed for.
“Homesick at a ball!” said Miss Bertha, with a kind inflection. She patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly with her thin ungloved hand. “You oughtn’t to be homesick now, you must enjoy yourself, my dear; you’re young.”
Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosia’s burning eyes. If she could only have stayed with Miss Bertha! But she was claimed for the dance. Why must you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never end?
The evening was half over when she found herself in front of Mr. Girard, with some one hastily introducing them. He had just come from up-stairs with several men, all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively fancied that he had kept out of her way on purpose, though she remembered hearing Leverich say that he did not know how to dance, and so did not care for balls. Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, his personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, as something unaffectedly charming and magnetic. Hewas tall, straight, and well made, with the square shoulders she remembered, and the easy, erect carriage of a soldier. The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his long, thin face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, all gave an impression of young vitality and power that accorded well with her thought of him. His eyes were light gray, and not very large; Dosia had seen them full of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to acquire a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had thought of him so long and intimately that his presence near her brought its exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. She looked up at him. It might help even her to be near anyone as strong as that, if he were kind—as kind as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, unconsciously, as she half extended her hand.
Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed formally as he said: “Pardon me, but I am just on my way to the train.”
He stepped aside, leaving a free passage for the youth who came pushing by to claim his dance with her, and was gone almost before she knew it. Hecouldhave stayed—he did not want to talk to her! She was lonely and disgraced, and the thought of Lawson an agony.
She did not see that, as Girard went into the hall, some one gripped him there and said fiercely, “Come with me!” Billy Snow, his eyes blazing, had pulled him out on the piazza beyond.
“You’ve got to answer to me for that,” he stuttered. “You’ve got to answer to me for that, Mr. Girard. Why did you turn away from Do—from Miss Linden like that?”
“What right have you to ask?” questioned the other man coolly, but with a sudden frown.
“None, except that I—love her,” said Billy, with a queer, boyish catch in his voice. “Yes, I love her, and she doesn’t care a snap of her finger for me. But I don’t care; I love her anyway, and I always shall. I’m proud to!” The catch came again. “She may step on me, if she wants to. You saw what happened here to-night when that damned brute—” He made a gesture toward the hallway.
Girard made no answer, but looked into vacancy for a moment. Before the sight of both of them came a vision of Dosia in all the radiance of her beautiful innocence, the flush on her cheek, and the divine, shy look in her eyes when she first raised them to Lawson, before it changed to——
“You saw what happened here to-night,” said Billy, with renewed heat at the other’s silence. “I don’t care whathesaid, or what you think; she’s no more to blame than——”
The other stopped him with a quick, peremptory gesture.
“You mistake,” he said shortly. “You’re speaking to the wrong person. I saw nothing. I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t want to.”
“What!” cried William, staring.
“Let me give you a piece of advice,” said Girard incisively, with an odd whiteness in his face. “Don’t you know better than to bring the name of a woman into a discussion like this? If a girl needs no defense—by Heaven, she needs none! And that’s the end of it. Only a fool talks.”
“Yes,” said William, with a sharp breath, after a pause,—“yes; thank you—I’ll remember. But when I meethim—” He stopped significantly.
“Oh, whatever you please!” said Girard, spreading out his hands lightly, with a smile and a quick, steely gleam in his eyes that cut like a scimitar.
“Sorry I’ve got to go—my overcoat is just inside. No, I don’t want to drive, I’d rather walk. Good-by!”
He went off in a moment, with long strides, down the carriage-drive to the station, the dance-music growing fainter in the distance. She was dancing still. Her face—her pure, sweet, pleading child’s face—went with him through the moonlight. He knew that look! When helpless things were hurt like that—He couldn’t talk to her that night, nor touch her hand, because of that burning desire to leap on Lawson Barr and choke the life out of him first.
The morrow after the ball was drawing to a close in darkening clouds and an eerie, rushing wind. It had been one of the gray, cold days of spring, with a leaden sky and a pervading damp and chill—a long, long day to some of those in the Leverich house. Rumor whispered that Lawson had been found upon the highroad in the early morning, unconscious, with his face and head cut, and that there were tracks yet on the side piazza from the feet of those who had carried him in from the muddy roads. Rumor said that the wounds had not come from accident. The doctor’s carriage had been there, and had gone again; but the doctor might have come to see Miss Linden, who was also said to be prostrated and in bed, or Mrs. Leverich, who was excused to callers as having a headache. The great house was silent and deserted-looking inside, except for the servants engaged in setting it to rights and carrying the furniture down from the attic, where it had been stored overnight.
Only a few even of the inmates—of whom Dosia was one—knew that Lawson was in an upper room, with his head bandaged, sobered and sullen, watching through the wide windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as he waited the completion of the arrangements that were to take him at nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had put his foot down this time; Lawson was to go. He wasbringing his vices too near home, concealment was no longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past rose to make a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected Dosia’s.
“It’s no use,” Leverich had said to his wife, in a stormy interview that morning, “I won’t have the fellow here another day. I’ll ship him off to Nevada, and not another penny will I give him while he lives. He can sink or swim, for all me; and hewillsink—down to hell.”
“Oh, don’t say that you won’t send the poor boy any money,” pleaded his wife.
“Not a red. I’ve had enough of him, Myra.Youknow! As long as he could appear half-way decent, I was willing to carry my end, but he’s going to the dogs now too fast for me. I’ve done with him; he goes to-night, whether he’s able to or not.”
Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. Mrs. Leverich, impelled by what sometimes seems to be the very demon of hospitality, still pressed her to stay longer, while knowing that her absence would be a relief.
“It is too bad that you want to go like this,” she had said crossly, sitting in gorgeous negligée by the side of Dosia’s bed, her handsome, richly colored face showing mean lines in it. “I looked upon you quite as a daughter; I thought we would have such nice times together. Why on earth couldn’t you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? Then none of this would have happened.” Her tone was complaining, as of one compelled to suffer unnecessarily; there was such a total absence of warmth as to prove that shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her aninjured feeling; if there had been a glamour around Dosia the glamour had departed. What little depth the nature of Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of blood, which made her resent any imputation on Lawson.
“I suppose you’d like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have your meals in your room,” she went on in a businesslike way. “I’ll send Martha up to pack your trunk for you—that is, if you insist on going—if she’s not too busy. The servants have so much to do to-day.”
“Oh, I can pack it myself,” said Dosia. What did one stab the more matter now? She took Mrs. Leverich’s hand impulsively. “You’ve been so good, so kind to me—you’ve given me so many pretty things,”—her voice sank to a whisper,—“it doesn’t seem to me that I ought to keep them now. I want to give them back to you.”
“What is it you say?” asked Mrs. Leverich impatiently. “You speak so low, I can hardly hear you. Oh, these!” She turned to a little pile of jewel-cases on the table. “Why, I gave them to you to keep. Well, if you feel that way about it—These pearls, perhaps, but the pins were quite inexpensive; do keep them, really, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, you know.”
“I’d rather not,” said Dosia; and her hostess gathered the things when she went out.
It was a long day—a long, long day. From the bed where Dosia lay, she saw the gray clouds shifting, shifting endlessly above through the opening made by the parted window-curtains. What had happened? Nothing—and everything; nothing—and everything!
Gossip reigned in the village, carrying Dosia and Lawson up and down its gamut, even reaching the highcrescendo of a secret marriage, with the inevitably hinted smirching reasons therefor. The Leverich ball promised to supply subject-matter for many a day to come. Mrs. Snow, from as early as eleven o’clock in the morning, sat with a white worsted shawl wrapped around her—the sign of elegant leisure—and rocked in the green-bowered and steaming little sitting-room between the geraniums and the begonias while awaiting visitors. She greeted each one who “ran in” with the invariable remark:
“I suppose you know all about the Leverichs’ ball last night. Well, what do you think of the goings-on there?” being intent mousingly on getting every last little cheesy crumb of detail, and peacefully unaware of deep, rich stores concealed in her own family. The incident of the stairway was common property, but Miss Bertha had told nothing of Dosia’s little heart-breaking confidence to her. Her mother was amazed at the very conservative disapproval expressed by this elder daughter, turning for confirmation of her own views to her callers.
“I thought, before all this, that the girl was a bold thing,” she announced in virtuous condemnation. “It’s all very well for you to try and defend her, Bertha, but neither you nor Ada would have gone on in that way.—Oh, yes, Mrs. Willetts, my dear, he kissed her on the stairs—just as they all say. But that was the least part of it. They say hismannerto her—And he was—yes, exactly. Oh, a man doesn’t take liberties, insucha way, unless a girl has allowed a good deal. It’s evident that they’ve—been—pret-ty—intimate. I’m sorry for the Alexanders, they’ll have a handful in her. Bertha, will you knock on the window? The man with the eggs is passing by, andwe want three.Bertha!you are not paying any attention to me. She is not herself at all to-day, Mrs. Willetts, she looks so yellow. Yes, you do, Bertha. Don’t you think she’s very yellow, Mrs. Willetts?”
“Perhaps it is the light,” suggested Mrs. Willetts evasively.
“No, it’s not the light; it’s the late hours,” said Mrs. Snow. “I did not want her to go to the ball, late hours knock her up for days. William shows the effect of it, too—his right hand is all swelled up. He says he doesn’t know how it got so, but I think it’s from dancing too much.”
“Mother!” expostulated Miss Bertha.
“Well, my dear, I don’t see why you speak to me like that. I’m not in my second childhood yet! I don’t know why he couldn’t get a swelled hand from dancing; some of these young girls are so athletic, they grip your fingers like a vise—I knowIfind it very unpleasant. Don’t you remember—no, of course you don’t, but I do—how poor General Grant’s hand was puffed out to twice its size from people shaking it? The picture of it was in all the papers at the time.”
“I don’t think William danced much,” said Ada.
Mrs. Snow pursed her pale lips and shook her small, neat head.
“All I know is that he was quite worn out; he slept so heavily that he never heard me at all when I rattled at his door-knob and called to him at three o’clock this morning that I thought I heard some one on the porch below his window. It’s very odd—I’ve heard it before. I don’t think it’s cats, and I’m so afraid of tramps.”
The statuesque Ada looked up with a swiftly startled expression.
“There are always tramps around,” said Mrs. Willetts.
“Yes, I know it, and it worries me to have William out so late alone. William is nothing but a child, though he is so tall,” said Mrs. Snow. “Of course, last night his sisters were with him.” She paused before harking back to the appetizing theme. “They say Miss Linden is still staying at the Leverichs’. I shouldn’t think she’d stay there an hour longer than she could help. They say Mrs. Alexander refused to have her back again at first—did you hear that? They say——”
And in Dosia’s room, where she lay alone, the long, silent day wore on; the gray clouds shifted, shifted above. What had happened? Nothing—and everything.
If Leverich was to keep his word about Lawson, the preparations for his departure must be speedy. They also took money. Leverich could contract for any amount of expenditure to be paid in the future by large drafts, but to hand over five hundred on the minute in cash was at certain times and hours an irritatingly difficult procedure. He cursed the necessity now, with a fervor born of the disastrous ball, and the late hours, and the further fact that stocks had gone down suddenly and he was out on a deal. The gray clouds meant also, in the city, clouds of dust, which the raw wind swept smartingly into his eyes every time he had occasion to go out. As he was getting ready at last to go home with the purchased tickets, he looked up and saw Justin coming in. Leverich nodded to the other’s greeting, but did not otherwise return it.
“I won’t ask you to sit down,” he said curtly; “I wantto catch the four-o’clock train out. How are you getting on? All right?”
“All wrong.”
“What’s the matter?”
“This,” said Justin, with a white light in his eyes, and holding out a letter which the other took half reluctantly, relapsing mechanically into the chair by his desk, while Justin dropped straddle-legged into another opposite, his face looking over the back of it, around which his arms were clasped. He went on talking, while the other slowly unfolded the paper and looked at the heading.
“You remember those first big consignments we sent out after the fire? Well, the whole output was rotten!”
“Great heavens!” said the other, sitting up straight, with his eyes stuck to the lines. “Are you sure it’s as this says?”
“Sure? It’s the sixth letter of the kind we’ve had in ten days; three came in this morning’s mail. The packing-room is full now of returned machines—what we’ll do with the rest I don’t know. A couple of firms want the instruments duplicated; the rest want their money back. We talked big at first, thought it was a mistake—that’s why I didn’t speak of it to you—but it’s no mistake; the whole output’s rotten. The bars are rusted and bent, so that everything’s out of gear; it would cost more to repair the machines than to make new ones.”
“Were the bars those you got from Cater?” asked Leverich.
“Yes.”
Leverich whistled.
“It’s no fault of his, those he used were all right.”
Bullen says they must have been a fraction off size for us, and that did the business. Heaven only knows how many more letters we’ll get! I don’t see how we’re to pay up and get out of it, as it is.”
“Yes,” said Leverich, throwing the letter down on the desk, drumming on it with the ends of his fingers. Then he shrugged his big shoulders as if shunting the burden from them as he rose. “Well, I must go. Sorry I can’t help you out, but Martin’s away now. By the way, when you can pay up on that interest, we’ll be glad to have it. We’ve been going pretty easy with you, you know, but it can’t last forever; we’ve got to have our money, as well as other people.” He had not meant to say anything of the kind, but the bad news and the inferred appeal had accented the irritation of the day.
“Oh, certainly,” said Justin, with a swift gleam in his blue eyes, and a pride that could be large enough to make contemptuous allowance for a little meanness in the man from whom he had received benefits. He had counted on Leverich’s ready help in this trouble, but there was more between the two men than the money—from the first moment of meeting this afternoon, Dosia’s name, unspoken, had correlated in each a little hidden spring of antagonism. One of Justin’s womenkind had misused Leverich’s hospitality; both resented the fact and her enforced departure. How many business situations have been made or marred by domestic happenings, no history of finance will ever tell.
And still the long day wore on in Dosia’s silent room.
The preparations for Lawson’s going were all made before the nightfall that was to cover his exit. His trunkhad gone; his coat and hat and hand-luggage were stacked conveniently together on a chair in the empty, cleared-out room.
“And this is the last money you’ll ever get from me,” Leverich said, counting out the bills on the table by which Lawson sat uneasily, his head and part of his swollen, discolored face bandaged, his dark eyes glancing furtively from under their heavy lids. “There are your tickets, they’ll carry you through. Peters will be at the door with the carriage at nine to take you to the train here, and James will go over with you to the terminal and put you on the sleeper. You can’t get out too fast for me.”
“It’s kind of you to kick a fellow when he’s down,” said Lawson sardonically.
“It’s a pretty expensive kick,” returned Leverich grimly, “but it’s the last. You’ll never get a cent more from me, nor from Myra either, if I know it.”
“Oh, very well,” said Lawson indifferently. But when his sister came in afterwards alone, he cut her words short; through all her plaintive farewell complainings there was a manifestly cheerful prevision of relief when he should be gone.
“I’ve had enough of this—don’t come in here again. He says you’re to send me no money, but you’re to send me all I want—you hear?”
“Oh, Lawson!”
“You know why you’d better.” He fixed his eye on her threateningly, and the full color blanched suddenly from her face.
“Yes, yes, I will.” She made an effort to recover herself. “If you realized how used up I am over all this——”
“Don’t come in here again!” His rising voice, the glance he shot at her, sent her flying from the room—it was as if some crouching animal were about to leap a barrier between them.
The shifting gray clouds were darkening now into a solid mass, the eerie wind that had sprung up whined fitfully around the corners of the house, as he sat there waiting. After a while the door opened and shut; there was a soft, rustling noise. Lawson looked up, and saw Dosia against that background of the darkening sky. She was in a white silken gown, given her by Mrs. Leverich, that fell in straight folds from her waist to her feet. She had been in white the night of the ball. But her face! He put his hand involuntarily across his eyes. So pinched, so wan, so small, so piteously changed that face, he did well to hide the sight of it from him. Only her eyes—those eyes that were the mirrors of Dosia’s soul—showed that she still lived; in them was a steadfastness and a purpose won from death.
She came straight toward him, though with a slow and languid step, dragging a low chair forward to a place by his. His rough appearance, so different from his usual carelessly well-cared-for aspect, sent a momentary spasm over her pinched face, but that was all. She dropped into the chair as one who found it difficult to stand, saying after a moment’s silence, in a childlike voice:
“Please take your hand down from your eyes; please don’t mind looking at me.”
He dropped the hand heavily on the table, with some inarticulate protest.
“Please don’t mind looking at me. I want to say—Icame here to say—it is all wrong to act as if everything were all your fault, as if you were all to blame. I’ve been thinking, thinking, thinking, all day long. If I had done what was right, none of this would have happened. It was my fault too.”
“No!” said Lawson roughly.
“Yes.” She stopped, and repeated solemnly: “It was my fault too. They are sending you away now because—because you had been making love to me. But I let you”—her locked fingers twisted and untwisted as she talked—“Iwantedyou to, when I knew it was wrong, when I didn’t really love you. That was why you couldn’t respect me. If I had been quite high and good, you would not have—none of this would have happened.”
“Oh!” said Lawson; the old bitter, mocking smile flickered back to his lips. “Really, don’t you think you’re setting too much value even onyourinfluence? I assure you, you can have quite a clear conscience in that regard.”
She went on, with no attention to what he had been saying beyond the fact that her pale cheek seemed to whiten and her gaze was fixed the more solemnly on his.
“I couldn’t be satisfied until I had thought out the truth. There is nothing that satisfies but the truth.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “If it cuts your heart in two, you’ve got to bear it—and be glad—because it’s the truth. I know now that, after all, I didn’t help you; Ihindered. That’s all the more reason for me to stand by you now. And I came to say,”—she took his hand and laid her cold cheek upon it,—“if you go away—take me with you! I have enough money to go too. If you have to work, I’ll work; if you are hungry, I’ll be hungry. There is no oneto love you but me, and Iwill. I said I would believe in you, and I will believe in you—as I promised—always.”
“My God!” said Lawson. He tore his hand from her, and flung his head upon his folded arms on the table, breaking into great, voiceless sobs that shook him from head to foot. Half-inarticulate words fell from him: “Don’t touch me—don’t come near me!” At last he turned, and, gathering up a fold of her gown, kissed it again and again. His passion raised a faint stir of the old thrill that came from she knew not where, except that his presence inevitably called it forth.
“For this once you may believe in me,” he said. “Look at me!” His gaze, burning with an inner scorn, rested on hers. “You are the dearest, the loveliest—” His voice broke once more, he had to wait before he could regain it. “If I were to let you sink your life with mine, I’d deserve to be hung. I’ve let you talk as if you could help me. Well, you can’t, and I’ll tell you why—I’ll clear your conscience of me forever. Down at the bottom of it all, I don’t want to be helped. I don’t want to be made better. I don’t want to live a different life! There are moments when I’ve deceived myself as well as you, but it was all rot. It’s not that I’m not fit for you,—no man’s that!—but I’m made so that I’d rather go to the devil thanbefit for you. The more you cared for me, the more I’d drag you down. That’s the whole brutal truth. The one saving grace I own is that I tell it to you now.”
“Ah, no, no!” said Dosia, with a cry. “It can’t be so.” She turned her head from side to side, as one looking for succor; her composure was failing her, after so many cruel knife-thrusts in her already bleeding heart—sheyearned over him with a compassion and longing too great to bear.
“Dosia,” said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice sounded far away in her ears.
“Yes,” she answered, rising also, she knew not why.
“This is good-by.”
She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed to lose the marks of dissipation and bitterness, and become strangely boyish, strangely sweet, in its expression.
“See!” he said, “I could clasp my arms around you, as I’m longing to, and kiss your darling mouth. You’d let me, wouldn’t you, blessed one? For all that I’ve done or all that I’ve been, you’d let me?”
“Yes,” whispered Dosia, trembling.
“Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, that I did not—that I was man enough to keep you free of me at the last. I’ll never touch you again—no, not so much as the hem of your gown. And, so help me God, I’ll never look upon your face again.”
“Lawson, Lawson!”
“I’ll never see your face again. When you think of me, believe and pray that I’ll keep my word. I want to have the thought of you to die with.”
“I can’t bear it!” wailed Dosia suddenly.
“Good-by.”
She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, and his gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking at each other; the room faded away from before them in those moments that were of eternity. The past—the present—the future crept up now and stood between them, pushing them farther and farther away from eachother, farther and farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and grown dim. They were neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, and beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting.
Through the high window the darkening sky had become suddenly luminous where it touched the horizon.
Slowly she moved away from him—slowly, slowly. One last lingering, solemn look, and the door had closed.
“Lois, would you mind very much if we didn’t move into the new house, after all?”
“Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be finished next week.”
“It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this year,” said Justin.
Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the purple wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after Dosia’s return. At the side of the steps a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the place fragrant; the air was full of a sort of glitter that touched the leaves whenever they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made the grass brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the voices of the children sounded peacefully over their early supper.
The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George Sutton, and the people who might “drop in,” as they often did on Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while waiting for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but now that he was here she put down her book with a show of reluctance as she said:
“Why didn’t you tell me before? I gave the order forthe window-shades yesterday when I was in town—that was what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks beforehand at this season of the year.”
“You can countermand it, can’t you?”
“I suppose I’ll have to—if we’re not to move into the house,” said Lois in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as usual, to her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled. “I thought you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the moneyallhave to ‘go back into the business,’” she quoted sardonically, “as usual? I think there might be some left for your own family sometimes. I’m tired of always going without for the business.” It was a complaint she had made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment she felt as if she were saying it for the first time.
“We have orders, I’m glad to say, but we’ve had one big setback lately,” he answered.
He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side—the very effort for success was meat and drink to him, he cared not what else he went without, so the business grew; but shemighthave had a little more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the grand climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right.
“I’ve been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven’t talked about it,” he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it—the whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, notdiffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the unreasoning sympathy of love.
“I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I shouldn’t have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple of houses for next year that you’ll like much better, he says.”
“Oh, it will be just the same next year; there’ll always be something,” said Lois indifferently, getting up to go into the house. “I hate the whole thing!”
He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that he could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If his own wife could be like that, she might be.
“Papa dear, I love you so much!”
He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes, her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent over.
“Zaidee, my little Zaidee,” he said, and, lifting her on his knee, strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure—his little darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his child, he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it was, could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the heart-hunger of his wife.
She had begun, since the ball, to go around again asusual, and the house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and unsmiling, accepting Justin’s occasional caresses as if they made little difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; it contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall must be adjusted to her ear—that ear that had strained and ached for his coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in which he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him until he kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at being so glad to go.
The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had borrowed a large sum from Lewiston’s,—a young private banking firm, glad at the moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of months,—holding on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new demand for the machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater’s, with whom there was still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich’s dictum regarding Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, outlying competitors: “You’ll have to force that fellow out of business or get him to come into the combine.”
Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success wasthe price demanded for the continuance of a backing; there was just a little of the high-handed quality in his manner which says, “No more nonsense, if you please.” That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs that were ready, if he showed symptoms of “falling down,” to shake him ratlike by the neck and cast him out.
“Papa dear, papa dear! There’s a man coming up the walk, my papa dear.”
“Why, so there is,” said Justin, rising and setting the child down gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. “Why, how are you, Larue? I’m mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?”
“The steamer got in day before yesterday,” said the newcomer, shaking hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark, pointed beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered over Lois. “How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? Which chair shall I push out of the sun for you—this one?”
“Yes, thank you,” responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green vines. “Aren’t you going to sit down yourself?”
“Thank you, I’ve only a minute,” said the visitor, leaning against one of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. “I’m out at my place at Collingswood for the summer, and the trains don’t connect very well on Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I wouldn’t pass you by.”
“Did you have a pleasant trip?” asked Lois.
“Very pleasant,” rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. “Oh, by the way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office last week. Anything I can do for you?”
“Have you any money lying around just now that you don’t know what to do with?” asked Justin significantly.
Mr. Larue’s dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the mention of money brings into social relations.
“Perhaps,” he admitted.
“May I come around to-morrow at three o’clock and talk to you?”
“Yes, do,” said the other, preparing to move on. “Please don’t get up, Mrs. Alexander; you don’t look as well as I’d like to see you.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Lois.
“You must try and get strong this summer,” said Mr. Larue, his eyes dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue turned once more and lifted his hat to her.
A faint, lovely color had come into Lois’ cheek, brought there by the powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larue’s presence; she felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had hardly talked alone for a couple of hours altogether in their whole five years’ acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest occasion, as he had to-day; he knew when she entered a room or left it, and she knew that he knew.
It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of either. He knew as soon as his eyes fell on her whether she were glad or sorry, lonely or confident, and his glance or the tone of his voice was a response to her mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or too cold, or needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such intuitions; he had to be told clumsily, and even then might not understand. Yet she had not loved him the less because she must beat down such little barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more for it—he was the man to whom she belonged heart and soul—but the barriers were a fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do nothing that Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she misunderstood her involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he reverenced her as his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He would have given all he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin took as a matter of course.
Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than half of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived abroad for the further study of music, an art to which she was passionately devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of scandal into the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away; there was nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden, under the undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant publicity of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She sometimes played the accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went over every spring, presumably to be with her, living alone for the greater partof the year at his large place at Collingswood. Neither was ever known to speak of the other without the greatest respect, and questions as to when either had been “heard from” were usual and in order; it was always tacitly taken for granted that Mrs. Larue’s expatriation was but temporary.
But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to that sting of the known comment of other men: “It must be pretty tough to have your wife go back on you like that.” In some mysterious way his wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished on her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married him, it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had proudly let her go.
Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said:
“There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia’s hurrying down the road. I think I’d better take the chairs in now.”
Dosia had come back from the Leverichs’ to a household in which her presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, and spent her evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough—sleep, where all one’s sensibilities were dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before, owing to their mother’s preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest. Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of all—as if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting for the next thing to happen.
Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She couldn’t understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get into an equivocal position with such a man—“really not a gentleman,” as she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was condemning.
The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at herwith curiously questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was absorbed.
Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory counting on the sympathy that had helped her before, but she had been unfortunate in the times for her visits; on the first occasion Mrs. Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to put out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, “People ought to know when to come and when not to.” Dosia got no farther than the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she was not asked to sit down.
Your trouble wasn’t anybody else’s trouble, no matter how kind people were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her devoted cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and giving her a curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. It would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could have hurt her very much. But Dosia was in the half-numb condition which may result from some great blow or the fall from a great height, save for those moments when she wasanguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest dagger-thrusts, at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, as when one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful dead which one must, for all time, be terribly powerless to alleviate.
Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her great bunches of roses that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly akin when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every week, though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest and solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other claims Mr. Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of profit for himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He required little entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected faculty for narrative conversation.
Foolish and inane in amatory “attentions” to young ladies, George was no fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of current facts, and could talk about the newsboys’ clubs, or the condition of the docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical reasons why motives for reform didn’t reform; and the talk was usually semi-interesting, and sometimes more—he had the personal intimacy with his topics which gives them life. Dosia began to find him, if not exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed. She began genuinely to like him; he took her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments when his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration or a warmer feeling, but was, instead, somewhat gratefullytouched by it. Not only her starved vanity but her starved self-respect cried out for food, and he alone gave it to her.
This Sunday afternoon Dosia—modish and natty in her short walking-skirt and little jacket of shepherd’s check, and a clumpy, black-velveted, pink-rosed straw hat—walked companionably beside the square-set figure of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a strong breeze, although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside trees and grasses had inspired him with the recollection of a country boy’s calendar—a pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or to hold her little checked umbrella so that the sun should not shine in her eyes, or to offer her his hand with old-fashioned gallantry if there was any hint of an obstacle to surmount. The way was long, yet not too long. They stopped, however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side of the slope below the carriage drive, looking down into the green meadows below; beyond, afar off, there was the white mist-hazed glimpse of a river with toy houses crowded thickly into the middle distance.
As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Sutton’s voice suddenly broke the silence:
“I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday.”
Dosia’s heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that anybody had spoken his name since he left.She had prayed for him every night—how she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any other reach than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in it—fear of any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting tone of the person who told it, which she would be powerless to resent; fear of awakening in herself the echo of that struggle of the past.
“He’s at the mines, isn’t he?” she questioned, in that tone which she had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him.
“Yes; but I don’t believe he’s working there yet. He seems to be mostly engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds like him, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance.
“I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there,” pursued Mr. Sutton. “It’s the worst kind of a life for him. He’s an awfully clever fellow; he could do anything, if he wanted to. I don’t know any man I admire more, in certain ways, than I do Barr.”
Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson’s clever brilliancy, his social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond. “I’ve known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he came to this place,” he continued.
“Oh, did you?” cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some words of Mrs. Leverich’s returned to her—“Mr. Sutton brought Lawson home last night.” So that was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she went on: “It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr.Barr. Everybody here seems to look down on—to despise him.”
“Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick,” said George, with an unexpected crude energy; his good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous expression. “Men talking about him who themselves——” He looked down sidewise at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more respectable than he,—respectability might be said to be his cult,—yet he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein “ladies” were a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of confidence by the fact of George Sutton’s presence. His feeling for Barr and toleration of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that George himself had also been brought up in one of those small, dull country towns in which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing houses have no home in them for a boy and his friends.
“If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all right,” he asserted shortly. “Perhaps we’d better be going home; it looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of difference in this world, Miss Dosia.”
“I suppose it does; I’ve never had it,” said Dosia simply.
“Maybe you’ll have it some day,” returned Mr. Sutton significantly. His pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawson’s name had created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson;heprized her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show it. He went on now with genuine emotion:“I know one thing; if—if I had a wife, she’d never have to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss Dosia.”
“She ought to care a good deal for you, then,” suggested Dosia, picking her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little black ties finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Sutton’s hand ever on the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow.
“No, I wouldn’t ask that; I’d only ask her to let me care forher. I think most men expect too much from their wives,” said George. “I don’t think they’ve got the right to ask it. And I don’t think a man has any right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that’s my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did me the honor of accepting my hand,”—Mr. Sutton’s voice faltered with honest emotion,—“I’d spend my life trying to make her happy, I would indeed, Miss Dosia. I’d take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her.”
“I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known,” said Dosia, with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off, outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book. Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first, and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love—in short, “John,” the honest, patient, constant “John” of fiction.His affection for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him, which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really “John”—Dosia half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman.
The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile overspread her face.
“Here’s the very lady for you now,” she remarked flippantly, as Ada Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark cloud in the background, on her way to a friend’s house from service at the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada’s cheeks took on a not unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton’s glance,—a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,—before she went down the side-road.