The Wayfarers Part 3

"I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the loveliest things to-day in town."

Already the thought of bra.s.s and mahogany and Oriental rugs, rich in texture and delicious in coloring, filled her mind.

To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession of money meant the opportunity to buy; the possession of yet more money would mean more opportunity to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with ease and promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most American husbands in his station, the sum spent upon house and family far exceeded in ratio his own personal expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented to him pre-eminently further business possibilities, the power to play competently in the great game, with the result of a sufficient provision for his wife and children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at the thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in this next year--

"Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go to town Friday, or wait until next month?" asked Lois suddenly.

"You had better wait," said Justin, with decision. He rose, and added: "You must go to bed, Lois."

She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially.

"Good night."

"You are not going to sit up later!"

"Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for something in this paper I forgot to notice earlier."

He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he must stay for a brief s.p.a.ce beyond the sound of her voice.

"Now, don't wait another moment, or you'll get cold." He spoke authoritatively. "The fire's almost out."

He had already turned from her, and was sitting down by the dim flicker of the newly lighted candle, absorbed once more in figures, with the newspaper before him. The midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; both experienced the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows time-worn and trivial conversation.

Lois' pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she left the room; but after a slight interval she returned with a gliding step and softly placed a fresh log upon the dull red embers of the dying fire, and fanned them noiselessly until a flame leaped out again, holding her white draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling across her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful self-forgetting smile shone out and became a part of the light around him before she vanished once more through the doorway.

CHAPTER THREE

Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, plush-covered seat of the sleeping-car, with her hands folded in her lap, looking out of the window at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green rows of cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of scrub-oak and pine, dotted here and there with gray cabins, around which negroes, little and big, in scanty garments were grouped to watch the train go by; occasionally it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced by no name for the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic legend, "Southern Express Company," on a swinging board at one end. It was before these ultimate days when factories are springing up all over the new South, and she had not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their staring yellow frames by the side of the muddy streams; only the cotton-fields and the scrub-oaks ran along by the train, with the view of the blue mountains here and there, and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had never seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world outside of her home.

There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, as that of the girl who is supposed to be contented with the little rounds of household life. Dosia's mother had died when she was a small child, but so much love and care had been given her by relatives and by her father, a professor in a small college and a gentle and good man, that she had never felt the loss. When she was twelve years old her father married again, and, on account of his failing health, they moved from their home in the West to the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small income which he already possessed, to engage in some industry suitable to his limited powers; but in the enervating climate he gradually lost all ambition and business habits. He became yellow in complexion and slouching as to appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the loungers around the village store or the new people from the North who came to learn the methods pertaining to cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything should be done.

He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always placid and amiable, and only regretting, as he continually affirmed, that he could not provide for the family as he should. The children, of whom there were four by this second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, who was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, and almost as self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother had from the first attached herself to Dosia, whom she treated even at that early stage of life less as a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all emergencies.

Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period in her existence the unthinking content of childhood had left her. It was natural to live in the small, poorly built house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with broken fences, with small children to dress and care for and a baby to be tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, with a continual desultory striving after a refinement of dress and living that was never accomplished. It was a matter of course to be always "clearing up," yet never in order, and to be always economizing temporarily in view of the stated remittance which never could be used for paying anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia was a sweet-natured child, affectionate and helpful, with a healthy const.i.tution which made work unnoticeable, and she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned way according to the views of her elders, without criticism or comment.

Her education, although desultory, had been fairly good, depending partly on teachers who came from the North and stayed in Balderville for their health, and partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well as culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he felt like it; for that, as everything else, was a matter of inclination with him and not of duty. She was fond of reading, and had also somewhat of a talent for music, which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she had been well taught at the beginning.

Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent order that obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors was bad or good, according to the year, like the peaches or cotton. With some of these visitors Dosia formed eager, transitory friendships, but with others there could be no a.s.similation. There were a few nice families settled in the place, more or less bound together by a community of interest centering in Balderville and the future of their children, who were usually sent away to school when half grown.

Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing faculties of its own-a terrible clear-sightedness, for one thing, and a black-and-white ruled-out sense of justice and injustice; it brought an absolutely new sense of values to Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked upon as entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and stepmother, were really the inevitable expressions of law. She saw that the true character of her parents was quite different from their own idea of it; that they would never change materially, and therefore, in the very nature of things, their fortunes could never change materially; they would always be going a little faster or a little slower on a down grade. She wondered at the exhaustless capacity of complacently believing in worn fallacies which her young eyes saw pitilessly as such.

Her stepmother still looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as a successful and energetic man of business for the moment only disabled by his failing health, and believed herself to be always on the point of managing the little money they had with superhuman economy, so that it would cover all household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could never be more money, and that what there was must always slip away. This knowledge laid the future waste and rendered effort futile. What was the use, for instance, of putting cushions on the lounge over the place where there was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of pretending that when the cracked and heterogeneous plates and dishes were replaced the table would be properly set once more? They never would be replaced.

If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they "went together," and arrangements were made in view of this known fact whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never "gone with"

anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked and took care of the children, and read, and found her father's walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why should she not be?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Theodosia_]

But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after the day's work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she was n.o.bly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didn't know how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living.

Many a night-like many another girl!-Dosia sat in the window of her shelving attic room, bathed in the golden moonlight, with her hair falling on her shoulders and her hands clasped before her, a picture for none to see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were around her.

The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! In vain she tried to stem it. She longed inexpressibly for that outer world, of which she had read, where youth was a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, clever, self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old regime where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to learn more about many things,-she longed to study music,-but she felt no inspiration and no desire for the life of an artist; she was, in fact, just a girl, who longed with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less intensely, for the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, the excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little daily delights, and-love. She dimly discerned unknown glories that made her breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed of some one in the far future who would be very good and very n.o.ble, whose love would hold her to everything that was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove herself extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, and whose hand on hers would set her heart beating. She imagined pouring out her heart to him,-that heart which seemed to be forever shut in her breast now, with none to understand it, none to care,-going to him with all these doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the blessedness of his response. "You darling," he would say, "don't you know I was loving you all the time? We neither of us knew each other, to be sure, but the love was there all the same; it had existed since the beginning of the world."

She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy which affects not only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, and which does not need iron as a curative power so much as a legitimate and healthy excitement.

Even Mrs. Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and showed listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors had openly commented on the fact; she said placidly that she was really worried about Dosia, and wished that she could have a change. And then one of those impossible, wonderful things happened which alter the whole surface of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia was to go to New York to study music, and spend the winter with a married cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of the suburbs.

Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, dressed in a new suit of blue serge, which had been sent from Atlanta, to fit her measure, with the rest of her traveling outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the seat, and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess.

Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of choice-bleared and shapeless in effect from much "making over," as purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she almost felt as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted perfume of the suede gloves was subtly intoxicating. She took furtive glimpses of herself in the gla.s.s panel beside her, and the sight filled her with a delighted wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so much like other people.

It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her face; she had that exaggerated idea of the importance of dress which belongs to people who have never been able to exercise their taste or fancy for it-particularly those who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet was like a picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she cared little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthful-just a girl's face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, when the color varied in it with the moment. She had blue eyes, a good mouth with a short upper lip, white teeth, and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert look in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; her slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her lips parted unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, with her varying color, gave her a charm.

But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless expression of extreme youth which experience has never touched, which has nothing to remember and nothing to forget-the typical fair white page, still unwritten upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday.

When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a large bra.s.s safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing kisses with the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The elders had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled remorsefully at the thought; she had been so shamelessly glad to go! And yet, she did love them. Mingled with a sense of kindness was also a strange little disappointment-she felt that when they turned homeward with their backs to the train they would let her slip out of their lives with the same ease with which they had accustomed themselves to let other things go, with a selfish inertia too deep to feel anything long. Only the baby-little Rolf-he would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a while, for his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her arms yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of latent motherhood unknown to her placid stepmother. It was characteristic of this girl, who was tired of taking care of children, that the fact of there being a two-year-old baby also at her cousin's house seemed now its crowning attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations about the darling.

After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of traveling, blurred out the past for her. She was journeying to the life that was hers by right; the luxurious appointments of the car, her own new elegance, began to seem a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, indeed, she had been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card offered her by the white-ap.r.o.ned colored waiter and selected her dinner as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing it that she thought he had forgotten it; but at last he brought the meal, and she ate it from the table which he had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; there was an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence.

Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, and took off her jacket, and made herself comfortable, as she saw others had done. The car was by no means crowded, and she had seen from the first that there was no one who could serve as a peg to hang a romance on-only middle-aged women and men, and a mother with half-grown children. She fell to wondering, as she had done many times before, what her cousins would be like; she was prepared to love them dearly. With the unconscious egotism of her age, everything in this new life was to revolve around her. The other players were accessories-she was the star performer.

The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and dark, of green and shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered white houses and rounded overhanging slopes that shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamed-and dreamed. Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and impalpable cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the berths were made up, people sitting the while in tired, silent groups in other sections, holding on to cloaks and hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind the curtains. Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and then lay down at last without removing any clothing, with both hands tucked under her soft cheek and her eyes staring before her. There had been a bustle of walking to and fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward a little when the train went suddenly around a curve. Gradually those wide-open blue eyes began to close; she seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on pillows of roseate down, between waking and sleeping; and then-_G.o.d in heaven_! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, helpless terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching her, beating her against the planks, jamming her into awful darkness as if she were a creature without bone or sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself among the other voices shrieking. A plunge, and then-nothing.

The night was inky black, and the wind that swept down the gorge brought an occasional raindrop with it. Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long while after that she heard voices, then a man's hand was pa.s.sed over her face and a voice close above her said, "It is a woman," and added, bending still nearer to her, "Can you speak?"

Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; instead, she broke into a helpless sobbing in which there were no tears. The man spoke to some one near, and she became aware that there were other sounds of talking and distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light twinkled and disappeared.

Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting her head gently, placed something soft under it. His touch was compa.s.sionate, and his tone still more so as he said:

"Are you in much pain?"

She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke for her. She wanted to question him, but could not. He seemed to divine her thought.

"Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you wonder where you are.

There has been a terrible accident-the trestle gave way, and one car fell down here; the others, I believe, smashed farther up somewhere.

People are coming to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do just as I tell you? Move your right foot-yes, there-now your left-now this arm-now the other. Why, that's brave of you!"-as she tried to raise herself a little. "Perhaps you will be able to stand soon." He broke off suddenly with a groan: "I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to Heaven I had! but there's not a drop left in the flask."

The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, and the sounds of moving and confusion around increased. The lights Dosia had seen above seemed to get nearer, and then twinkled down close to the wreck; but even then, in the opaque blackness of the night, they remained only isolated points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered and went backward and forward; with them came more voices and stumbling feet, sounds half swallowed by the depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of wind.

Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the fleeting flash of a lantern above her revealed that there was no one beside her; it was like being dropped again into nothingness. She did not know how long she lay there. With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised her to a sitting position, and held her there, with her head resting against the shoulder of this new-found friend. "Drink this-all of it. I want to see if you can stand after a few moments, and perhaps walk-there are so few stretchers." Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder.

"No, I will not leave you"-he spoke as one would to a little child, as she made a faint, terrified motion to hold his arm-"I will not leave you. I will take you every step of the way. You are a girl, aren't you?

Were you alone on the train? Had you no friends with you?"

She whispered with some difficulty, "No one."

"You are perhaps spared much." There was a silence. Presently he said gently: "We must not wait here too long; we must follow the lanterns-see, they are going. You can stand; now try and walk. Give me your hand-that way. Lean on me. Take one step-now another. Come! Don't be afraid-you _must_."