The Wayfarers Part 12

"You have been out every night this week"-there was a suspicion of tears in her voice. "I do so hate to be left alone."

"You have Dosia."

"Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I can't make out that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home this evening-won't you, dear?"

"I can't-I wish I could." He said the words mechanically, for he was burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. "I must be at Selden's by half-past eight.'

"It is only a quarter-past now-you can walk there in five minutes. Do sit down for a moment. I don't get any chance to talk to you at all, and you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any more-except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night."

Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrast-her rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful, but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his hat against it. She lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a loss--

Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness of their possession lately,-the sweetness that consists in watching the unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,-but when he had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious moments waste. He could hear Zaidee's gentle little voice repeating her mother's perfunctory extenuation: "Poor daddy's nervous; come away, Redge!"

"I hope you'll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the stairs," said Lois suddenly.

"He'll put one there if he can."

"If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I don't want the house if he can't put the closet in. I--"

"All right. I've got to go now." If he had cared to think about it, he might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried him from her.

The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures-of which the house on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with the principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality, there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently a.s.similating gradually smaller ventures with the main one.

The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute are from the tw.a.n.ging strings and blended diversity of a whole orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but "hands" must be paid off on Sat.u.r.day night; there had been one Sat.u.r.day when there had been what Leverich called "tall hustling" by him and Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had thought of his backers as men of millions-with that easy, a.s.sured confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions were in the concrete, solid and golden-a bottomless store in reserve.

He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant quality, running like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place, there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little b.u.t.ter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover an emergency was a daily expedient-the ability to do so ranked as a part of one's a.s.sets. Lois could not understand why, when such large sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the "business"

seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and the children's.

Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but a woman. His att.i.tude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because she must wait until night to set herself right with him again. At those times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her children-her only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother's absence.

She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal annoyance,-like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,-that measurably lessened the joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man must have patience with his wife's complainings, and try always to remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it, which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him.

Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired in an old "dress suit," the conventional lines of which, with the stiff expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature still more p.r.o.nounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring earnestness.

"Well, you are all right," he said, after the first greetings; "Miss Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South I'd say just what I thought of you, but I'm afraid to up here; folks are too careful about complimentin' for me. When I see a young lady like you,-or like Mrs. Alexander, here,-" he rose and bowed gallantly, "I want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. There's nothing so beautiful on G.o.d's earth to me as a beautiful woman-unless it's a mother. A mother doesn't need to have a complexion if she's got the mother spirit shinin' out of her. I had a mother once-a better never lived. She's dead."

"That is very sad," said Lois, in the pause that followed this announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful communing.

"Yes, ma'am," said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it.

"How is your wife?" asked Dosia. "Have you seen her lately?"

"I was home for a week around Christmas-time," answered Mr. Cater. "It's sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short period-at least, I find it so. I don't know _as_ it pays, except as something to look forward to before you've done it; there's a good deal in that. My wife lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home."

"I should think she would want to stay here with you," said Dosia.

Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. "Well, the fact is," he conceded, "my wife's powerful fond of her family. There's nothing against a woman being fond of her family."

"Oh, no," said Lois.

"No, ma'am. My wife's a mighty fine woman. If I'd had the luck to belong to her family-but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to me crops up, I expect, when I ain't countin' on it. She did bring the children and try livin' up here in a flat the first year I went into the business, but it made her so pinin' she had to go back; she wasn't used to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_ know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin' sort of old and agin', and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin' her, I reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin' a gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he'd promised her to quit. Her sister's husband, Jim Pierce, he'd lit out before. Now, there's the other brother, Satterson-he's a mighty fine fellow, six foot two in his stockin's, but he doesn't _do_ anything. Just drinks. My wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don't blame any woman for being devoted to her family-shows heart."

"Why, yes, I suppose so," said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater's earnings; she knew his wife as a pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth.

"After all, there isn't much in a man, when you get down to it, to interest a woman," continued Mr. Cater impartially. "She wants him to think of _her_; of co'se it's his business to. I had a sort of set idea to begin on-but there's nothin' in life so wreckin' as a set idea; I've found that out. You've got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and turn it so's you can see to keep on your windin' way without runnin'

down your fellow-bein's-isn't that so? I don't blame any woman for findin' out that a man doesn't always make up for home and mother-I don't know that I always yearn for my own society." His inscrutable expression changed to a smile. "I reckon you won't yearn for it, either, if I go on talkin' in this way."

"Oh, yes, I will," said Dosia, dimpling. "Did you see my father and mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?"

"Why-about the same as usual," replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a swift mental view of them pa.s.sing before his eyes that instantly materialized itself to Dosia. "I promised them I'd come and see you-and meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia's comin' here that I got acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander," he continued, turning to Lois. "He's a mighty fine man. He and I, we're choppin' at the same log, so to speak, only he's takin' side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon he's got a pretty good backin'?"

"Oh, yes," affirmed Lois.

"Yes, ma'am. Of course, he doesn't talk about it. I haven't seen Mr.

Alexander much for a couple of weeks; he's been busy and I've been busy-we lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his friends-Mr. Leverich for one-slightly in the way of business. Mr.

Martin-Mr. Martin's a man _n.o.body_ knows more'n slightly. You would not think he was such a smart business man, would you? He's so sort of small and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. But _I_ don't care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake in all they touch. Now you think I'm hard on him, don't you?" He hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois: "Martin sort of reminds me of somethin' that happened with my two boys when I was home at Christmas. They're little shavers, Mrs. Alexander, right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you."

"They are dear little fellows," said Dosia warmly.

"They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind 'em, and Angy-that's the eldest, he's six-was stoppin' the way; so I says to him, 'What's stoppin' you, son?' and he answers: 'Oh, I'm carryin' up Jim's cake and my cake, and I'm eatin' _Jim's cake now_.' That's like Martin for all the world-always carryin' somebody's cake for 'em, and swallowin' it on the way. Well, doesn't it seem good to be lookin' at you again, Miss Dosia! But I'm sorry Alexander isn't in, too."

"Oh, I hope he'll come before you leave," returned Lois. It seemed a foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure, half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There was a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way, when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent.

Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word "home"

carried such suggested a.s.sociation that Dosia half forgot that it had never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy.

When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more.

"Well, this is comfort," he said, with a sort of wistful grat.i.tude.

"I've been thinkin' 'twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train, but I'm sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young ladies takin' all this trouble for me-well, I just can't tell you how I appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside."

"You must get pretty lonely sometimes," said Lois kindly, with a sudden sympathy for something in his tone.

He nodded slowly. "Well, yes, I do; but I've quit thinkin' of it, as a rule. I reckon I've got about as much as I deserve in this world, when you come to sizin' things up. If you get to pityin' yourself, you slump; you slump all _to_ pieces-ain't no mortal good to yourself nor anybody else. I've found _that_ out."

"You seem to find out a good many things," said Lois, with a twinge of a.s.sent.

"Well, yes, I do." His face relaxed in a pleased smile. "Keep addin' to my collection daily; but it isn't cheap, no more than other collectin'-costs money. Girard says-by the way, I never asked you if you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the train. I didn't know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this rabbit's more'n good. I haven't had one like it since I was with Girard last year."

"No, I do not know anyone by that name," said Lois a little wearily.

"Then you'd ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she'd ought to. He's a _man_.

Young, too, just the kind she'd like. He's related to the Wilmots, Judge Wilmot's family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came.

His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their money. Kind of wearin' to hear that, ain't it? I get tired of it myself.

I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money-or are a-losin' it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that's risin' into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible to walk on somethin' that isn't a down grade."

"How about Mr. Girard?" asked Dosia.

"Oh, well, he's all right. He's on an up grade, if anybody ever was-now. But I wouldn't want a boy of mine to go through what he has, though it's made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after they'd moved 'way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don't know that she wrote to the rest of 'em. I don't know but what her mind got sort of wanderin' when she fell sick. She died at a little town in Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn't anyone to look after the child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor little chap, brought up tender by a lovin' mother, used to crawl into the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once-Girard, he hardly ever talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a snow-storm-he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_."