The Wayfarers Part 15

"You had better not."

"I will believe in you!" Her tone had even greater insistence. "I know what it is-myself-to be with those who do not care. You are not as other people think you! You can be good and n.o.ble. You can"-her voice sank to a whisper-"resist temptation. If one prays-it helps; I know that." Her voice rose steadily again, after a tremulous silence: "You can never say again that no one believes in you, for I believe in you."

"And care?" asked Lawson.

His eyes glittered and his face worked with some unusual emotion.

"And care," a.s.sented Dosia, with the same unwavering eyes and serious, childlike candor of tone.

He stooped and gently pressed his lips to her hand as it lay upon her gown. "You are the very sweetest child! I-" He stopped abruptly, and walked away to the window. The next moment Mrs. Leverich was rustling into the room.

If she suspected an interview too confidential, she showed nothing of it in her manner. She had come back to take her guest out driving, after all-the sun was shining. Dosia ran to get ready, tingling-was it from the exaltation or the excitement of this interview, with its unexpected compact? She trembled with the pathos of it all. She pa.s.sed each phase of it rapidly before her mind, to convince herself that there was nothing in words or feeling, no, nor in that reverential homage of Lawson's, that could be interpreted as disloyalty to the unknown to whom her future belonged.

Mrs. Leverich was waiting with a magnificent wrap of velvet and fur for Dosia to put on in the carriage over her street costume.

"I was sure you were not warm enough yesterday," she explained. She leaned forward to call to the coachman: "James, you may drive first to Benning's. We are going to get some chocolates to take with us, dear; I know girls always enjoy themselves more if there is a box of chocolates handy."

"Oh, Mrs. Leverich!" said Dosia gratefully.

"And we will stop at the greenhouse and get some flowers for you to wear to-night at dinner; you know, George Sutton is coming. I want you to look particularly well."

"I don't care to look particularly well for _him_," objected Dosia, stiffening.

"No, of course, you don't _need_ to; but, still, a girl should always look as pretty as she _can_; she can never tell who is going to see her.

James, ask at the express-office if there are any packages. I sent for some of the new books. Yes, that is for me. Now, my dear, you'll have something nice to read."

"You are too good, Mrs. Leverich; you are just spoiling me," said Dosia.

In these three days she had been the recipient of so many gifts and favors that it was difficult to know how to vary her expression of grat.i.tude. She had already been presented with a white China silk tea-gown, the scores of two of the latest light operas, and an amethyst belt-pin. The little music-room had been fitted out appropriately from floor to ceiling, and framed with palms; Mrs. Leverich had spent the whole of one morning with a corps of servants, planning, directing, and approving. Dosia had hardly time to frame a wish before it was forestalled.

"It is such a comfort to me to have you here," continued Mrs. Leverich, sinking back among her cushions. "You may take the Five-mile Drive, James. If I had only had a daughter! I said this morning to Mr.

Leverich, 'I am going to pretend she's my daughter while she's here.'

You don't mind, dear? You will let me have you for my very own?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Dosia, with the warmth of youth.

"I have never wished for a son. Boys are a terrible responsibility.

There is Lawson."

"Yes," said Dosia, as she paused.

"He has always been such a trial. We have given him every advantage-and he _has_ every advantage naturally; but it's no use. Mr. Leverich says he will make one more effort for him, and if that is no use he must go.

We have simply done all we can. I would not speak so openly to you if you had not been staying in the house, but you could not help hearing."

"Hearing--?"

"Yes, these nights when he has come home so late. George Sutton brought him home Tuesday night from the train-he couldn't walk alone. I was so ashamed at the noise!"

"Oh!" breathed Dosia in a horrified undertone. She added, "Has he always been like this?"

"More or less. At first it was only when he went away; but he couldn't keep any position long, because he _would_ go away for days and days at a stretch. And now it is getting to be-_any_ time. I'm sure we have done everything in this world to keep it quiet. And Lawson has every advantage naturally; it is only this-drinking. Of course, no one can have any confidence in him; I always felt that it was hopeless, from the first."

No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation as a ray of light gilding this dark and slimy mora.s.s, the sight of which had unexpectedly revolted her. In Balderville only the lower cla.s.s of inhabitants drank; no young man of respectability or position was to be seen among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of her through which she had promised to have faith? He had not posed as devoid of offense; on the contrary, he had confessed to guilt, only she had not quite understood. Sin as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite decently presentable; it is only when it is particularized that the monstrosities below are hideously revealed.

"It must be a great grief to you," she said now, with earnestness.

"Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much on my mind after this winter; he has put his foot down. The nights I have pa.s.sed! I'm always fancying that he is run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; it's the most dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream on the way back-don't forget; and those cakes at Mrs. Springer's-they were ordered yesterday. Where was I? I forget. Oh, yes-the most dreadful strain! and I felt that I ought to speak about him to you, as you are staying under my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after the disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep up a pretense any longer. You can see just what he is yourself."

"Yes, indeed," said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent.

Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot bouillon on her return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted the logs in Dosia's room with her own fat, white, beringed hands, and enveloped the girl enthusiastically several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in confirmation of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty about the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely responsive in spirit to the least show of it, material demonstrations were unnatural to her; she was shy of being touched even by her own s.e.x. It was only with little children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster had appealed so strongly to her imagination was partly because of the fact that the comfort it conveyed transcended the strangeness of contact. To be pressed now to a warm, semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds of mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarra.s.sed grat.i.tude, which she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate to the occasion. And she was weary of trying to elude the vacillations of her mind. She would keep her promise to Lawson,-yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the more he needed it,-but she would be very careful, too; she would be _very_ careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to spring into being.

He was at the dinner as well as Mr. Sutton. The sixth person was Ada Snow, with the well-bred composure which concealed her innate shyness, and in the white dotted swiss she had worn for ten years past, ever since she had graduated, in fact, and which still looked decently presentable. Dosia was gay and conversational, as she was expected to be, the party being hers; she had began to feel the daughter of luxury, if not of Mrs. Leverich, and accepted the honors with the easily accustomed grace that is born of admiration and security, conscious every moment through it all of that bond between herself and Lawson. He looked boyish and happy. Later, in a talk about skating, he offered to teach her to skate the next day if the ice held, and Mrs. Leverich, to whom Dosia looked, expecting her to invent some excuse, approved at once, and planned to send for skates the first thing in the morning. His quizzical eye seized unerringly on the signs of withdrawal in her, and brought the blush of compunction to her cheek, while Mr. Leverich jocosely deplored that he could not take the office of trainer instead.

Mr. Sutton, who had sat by her at dinner, and hovered amorously over her in the way a girl detests in a man she does not care for, might have been mysteriously rebuffed by the suggestion of Lawson's intimacy, for he devoted himself for the rest of the short evening to Ada Snow, who dropped into one of her statuesque angles on an ottoman, and talked to him in her low, trained voice with modestly confidential deference, until he left, quite early. His attention to Miss Snow had not kept him, however, from picking up Dosia's handkerchief twice when she happened to drop it.

Billy Snow created a diversion by coming in at half-past ten for his sister, and stating casually that he had seen the doctor's carriage stopping at the Alexander house as he pa.s.sed.

"As you pa.s.sed _now_?" cried Dosia, startled. "Are the children worse?"

An unacknowledged compunction, which she had felt through all her pleasures, at leaving the sick household, sprang swiftly to the front.

"Oh, I'm so afraid Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there at once and see!"

"If they only had a telephone," began Mrs. Leverich, for the twentieth time. "I can send--"

"Oh, if I could only go myself!" interrupted Dosia, looking utterly miserable in her sudden wild anxiety.

"You could have the carriage-but James is asleep." Mrs. Leverich looked almost as miserable as Dosia in her baffled hospitality. "But if you don't mind walking--"

"No-oh, no!"

"Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some wraps in the hall; I'll pin your dress up, so that you won't need to take the time to change it. _Must_ you go, Ada? Then you can all walk down together. Mr.

Leverich would have offered to go with you himself, I know, Dosia,-wouldn't you, Joseph?-if it were not for his cold. But Lawson can take you, of _course_!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, had plenty to keep her hands busy, and yet, as there was no particular anxiety attaching to the disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of thought at the same time, so that little occupations really occupied only a small corner of her mind, and the larger part was continually taken up with the subject of larger interest-herself. While she rocked the children and sang to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, and took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, she was unceasingly traversing a country wherein she walked alone and in exile.

The quarantine had shut her in more rigorously upon herself; there were now no distractions. Her husband was more anxious about the children than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so much was thrown upon her; he had wanted to get a trained nurse at once, but after her a.s.surances that she did not mind staying in, that her exertions did not tire her, and that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted this version without further question or comment, and went about his affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her own department. It is a well-known fact that quarantine, the observance of which is exacted down to the last second of its limit from the women of a household, does not affect the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as possible about being much with the children. He stood obediently outside of the nursery door and talked to them from there when Lois said, "You had better not come in." When she refused a service offered by him, he did not press it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again to spend the long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, at houses where there were no children to be kept from contagion, and where he could talk to men. He was really so busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in any way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to be able to leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, besides, a curious hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously resented-she seemed to hold herself aloof from him, and there was no allurement to follow. That temporary indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference because they do allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship at will-this had been pushed too far. It is a dangerous thing to let love slip away, even for the pleasure of regaining it.

It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should have to stand alone now. She could have done this willingly if she had been by herself, but to stand alone in this dual solitude, where she might have had support-she could not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with the pity of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, red-eyed, upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of her effort.

There is little provision made in most girlhood for that independence of living which marriage unexpectedly forces upon a woman, in many instances, in almost as great a degree as when she is thrown out into the world upon her own resources. To be high and fine, rational and spirited, cheerful and loving, quite by one's self, without audience or applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the muscles are little trained. A woman can reach almost any height on a spurt for praise or recognition; but to get up, sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, care for the children, order the meals, as a rational human being whose business it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no personality attached to it-to have it taken for granted that she would naturally order her life as suited her best, and desired no interference-it was like being pushed out into the cold.

If Justin's indifference was unexplainable to Lois, it was equally mysterious to him that she expected daily to be urged to seek amus.e.m.e.nt, to "take something" for her cold, to stay in if it were wet or to go out if it were dry, to avoid overwork, not to sew too much, and to be sure and rest in the afternoon-all the little kindly round of woman's sympathies that keep the heart warm. Justin had been brought up in the good old-fashioned way by a mother who, while requiring obedience and honesty from her sons, never required them to think of anybody else. In his conduct now he did entirely as he would be done by. He hated to be noticed, himself, in little ways; he did as he pleased, with the directness that is the inheritance of centuries of predominance, but he had become affectionately parrot-wise in some of the sentences he found were conducive to his wife's happiness. In his new absorption he had forgotten the sentences; he was deeply occupied with his own affairs.

When Lois said to Zaidee, "Mamma is busy; she cannot attend to you now,"

she exemplified unconsciously her husband's present position toward herself. Many men regard women primarily in the light of children; and the more occupied Justin became in his own affairs, the more reluctant he became to talk of them at home to this child who was his wife. Her vivid surprise at normal conditions, the unnecessary worry and shallow generalization of ignorance, irritated him. He became more and more taciturn, though he was always kind and affectionate, even if his kindness and affection lacked, as she felt, the true inner glow; but in the state of mind which Lois had now made her own, no evidence of affection, however great on the part of her husband, would have meant anything to her more than momentarily, for it was seen afterwards through a medium which at once distorted and nullified, and not even the complete absorption in and surrender to herself that she craved could have satisfied the insatiable. She was drifting to a place among the great and terrible company of nerve-centered people, revolving wheels of centripetal force, sweeping into their own restless...o...b..t all with which they come in contact as they go on their devastating way through the universe.