The Wayfarers Part 19

"Lawson! not now." Her tone was angry. "Go up-stairs-to bed."

"Well, I guess-not!" said Lawson. He swept her hand from his arm, and was out of the door and running quickly down the steps before she turned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _It 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!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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 coa.r.s.eness, 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, or was 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sentingly, 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 l.u.s.trous 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 tw.a.n.ging 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Like 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 debutante. 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 s.p.a.ce 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-k.n.o.b, 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 antic.i.p.ation; 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Somebody 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, through all 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.