The Wayfarers Part 24

Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia--"

"I have already met Mr. Girard," said Dosia, turning very white, but speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he bowed with politely murmured a.s.sent. Stepping back to a chair half across the room, he seated himself by Justin.

A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met hers-resentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched-though he turned from her a moment to say:

"Weren't you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard?"

"Yes; I thought you didn't see me," said the other lightly, himself turning to respond to a question of Justin's, which left the other group out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed himself with ardor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for n.o.body else_]

There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there talking to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging personality, seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, by the side of Girard.

Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the dining-room,-with black-eyed Redge, st.u.r.dy and turbulent, following after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him away,-came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in women's society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of shyness, of deficiency-perhaps partly caused by the conscious disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born, but it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to be credited, and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like many very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of attractiveness himself.

It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation, with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and the water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the round mahogany table with a gla.s.s bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled lilies-of-the-valley in the center.

The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed to be only a veil for the things of the spirit-subtle cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one knew not what. To Dosia's swift observation, Girard had lost some of the brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the ball; he looked as if he had been under some hara.s.sing strain. Her first impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was reinforced now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then, had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, the hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the shrine of her memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger. Had he known? He must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the most! She could not hear what he said though the room was small; he and Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was evident that he frankly admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became curiously aware that from his position directly across the room he was covertly watching her as she sat consentingly listening to George Sutton, whose round face was bending over very near, his thick coat sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles of hers as it rested on the carved arm of the little sofa.

She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its big blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the simple rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held.

Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia's bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her imagining-she felt the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was, indeed, in that stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any concealment, and for which other men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even while she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish manifestation of something inherently great, and a tribute to her power. To Dosia's indifference, in this strange dual sense of another and resented excitement,-an excitement like that produced on the brain by some intolerably high alt.i.tude,-Mr. Sutton's attentions seemed to breathe only of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very kind.

She could ask him to do anything for her, and he would do it, no matter what it was, just because she asked him. He was planning now a day on somebody's yacht, with Lois, of course; and "What do you say, Miss Dosia-can't we make it a family party, and take the children too?" he asked, with eager divination of what would please this lovely thing.

"Yes, oh, why can't you take _us_?" cried Zaidee, trembling with delight.

The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole place was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosia's voice was heard saying:

"I'll get my photograph now, if you want it." She rose and left the room,-she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,-and Zaidee ran over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain against Dosia rosy warm.

"You had better light the lamp, Justin," said Lois, and then, "Oh, you're not going?" as Girard stood up.

He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. "I'm afraid I'll have to."

"I expected you to stay to tea; I've had a place set for you."

"I'd like to very much-it's kind of you to ask me-but I'm afraid not to-night. I'll see you to-morrow, Sutton, I suppose. Good evening, Mrs.

Alexander." His hand-touch seemed to give an intimacy to the words.

"Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere," said Justin, investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who had followed the two, stood in the doorway.

"I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by?" asked Girard tentatively.

"Will you, Zaidee?" asked her father, in his turn.

For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. Girard dropped on one knee, a very gallant figure of a gentleman, as he put both arms around the small, light form of the child and held her tightly to him for one brief instant while his lips pressed that warm cheek. When he strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in farewell, it was with an odd, somber effect of having said good-by to a great deal.

For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had been the recipient of an emotion called forth by some one else.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Lois?"

"Yes?"

Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary overhead singing with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her look gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was busy, as ever, with-no matter what she was doing-the self-fullness of her thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to move into the other house, where, amid new surroundings, she could escape from the familiar walls and outlook that each brought its suggestion of pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how she wanted to be happy.

Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said:

"I've something to tell you, Lois."

"Well?"

"I'm engaged to George Sutton."

"Dosia!"

Lois' work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl.

"I'm sure I don't see that you need be surprised," said Dosia. She looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either sympathy or interest.

"No, I suppose not," said Lois. "Of course, I know he has been paying you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls almost as much." She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a sense, she had rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly solve many difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia-if Dosia could--!

Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without loving him would have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a physical impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or support was outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with cold disapproval:

"Dosia, you don't know what you are doing. You don't love George Sutton."

Dosia's face took on the well-known obstinate expression.

"He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is satisfied, I don't see why anyone else need object! He likes me just as I am, whether I care for him or not."

She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though her voice was tremulous. "And I _do_ care for him. I like him better than anyone I know; we are sympathetic on a great many points. No one-_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesn't want anything but to make me happy."

Lois made a gesture of despair. "Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what girls imagine, Dosia."

"I suppose so," said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to Lois. "Would you like to see my ring?" She turned the circle around on her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. "He gave it to me last night."

"It is very handsome," said Lois. "I suppose you will have to be thinking of clothes soon," she added, with a glimmer of the natural feminine interest in all that pertains to a wedding, since further protest seemed futile. "I will write to Aunt Theodosia."

"Thank you," said Dosia dutifully.

A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches, and strawberries as large as the peaches, and the contents of a box of flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge-the former winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, jumping on her back whenever she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! Nothing could be sweeter than these.

In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, she put on her hat with the roses and went to make a call, long deferred and hitherto impossible of accomplishment, on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a bride of a few months, who, as Alice Torrington, had been one of the girls of her outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but she felt that Alice Wayne's state of mind would be more sympathetic, even if unconsciously so, than Lois'.

As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when he had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given him an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on the words: