The Wayfarers Part 30

"Yes, please do; he can't get anything now but the last train out."

"And you don't want me to stay here with you?"

"No-oh, no."

As once before, Lois waited for that train-yet how differently! If that injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word, she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity herself-she would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that way.

The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, as she got up and sat by the window, looking out from behind the curtain, her beautiful braided hair over one shoulder. The last train came in, the people from it, in twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. He must have missed that last train out-of course he must have missed it!

We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; the amount of "worry" more or less willingly indulged in by uncontrolled minds seems at times enough to swamp the understanding. Yet there is a foreboding, unsought, unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed quality of truth.

Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"And you haven't heard _anything_ of him yet?"

"Not yet, Mrs. Alexander. I'm sorry-oh, so sorry-to have nothing more to tell you. But I'm sure we'll hear something before morning."

Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly on Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little hallway, looking up at him, with Dosia behind her. This was the third night since that one when Justin had failed to appear, and there had been no word from him in the interim. Owing to that curious way that women have of waiting for events to happen that will end suspense, rather than seeking to end it by any unaccustomed action of their own, no inquiry had been made at the Typometer Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which had been pa.s.sed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing him walk in. However, n.o.body at the company knew anything of Justin's movements, except that he had left the office rather early the afternoon before, and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It was presumable that he had been called suddenly out of town, and had sent some word to Mrs. Alexander that had miscarried.

That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who was evidently disquieted, though bluffly and rather irritatingly making light of her fears; he seemed to be both a little reluctant and a little contemptuous.

"My dear Mrs. Alexander, you can't expect a fellow to be always tied to his wife's ap.r.o.n-strings! He doesn't tell you everything. We like to have a free foot once in a while. Why, my wife's glad when I get off for a day or two-coaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything happening to Alexander-well, an able-bodied man can look out for himself every time; there's nothing in the world to be anxious about.

He's meant to wire to you and forgotten to do it, that's all-I forgot it myself last year, when I was called away suddenly, but Myra didn't turn a hair; she knew I was all right. And if I were you, Mrs.

Alexander,-this is just a tip,-I wouldn't go around telling _everyone_ that he's gone off and you don't know where he is. It's the kind of thing folks get talking about in all kinds of ways; his affairs aren't in any too good shape, as he may have told you."

"Isn't the business all right?" queried Lois, with a puzzled fear.

"Oh, yes, of course-all right; but-I wouldn't go around wondering about his being away; he's got his own reasons. You haven't a telephone, have you? I'll send around word to have one put in to-day. I'll tell you what, I'll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the quiet-he's got lots of wires he can pull. You won't need me any more."

Leverich's meeting with Dosia had been characterized on his part by a show of brusque uninterest; he seemed to her indefinably lowered and coa.r.s.ened in some way-his cheeks sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant admission that he must bl.u.s.ter to avoid the detection of some weakness.

And Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits from him, caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her, she ought not to let that fact be defaced, but everything connected with that time seemed to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of horror. All his loud reb.u.t.tal of anxiety now could not cover an undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women tenfold greater when he was gone.

Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had seen him both times; he had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy, and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs.

Alexander, but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly nothing in Dosia's quietly impersonal att.i.tude to call it forth. Her face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for anyone to see-poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her woman's lesson of concealment.

But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, and with a hundred lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the tortured wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of his being entirely one with her in its absorption-of there being no other interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justin's return.

When Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be set at rest; during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were swept away, everything was on the right train, word would arrive from Justin at once; and when he left, all was black and terrible again.

The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these strange days when mamma never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made merry for them, and saw to the household, which was dependent on the service of a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to put her young arms around Lois and hold her close with aching pity.

The suspense of these days had changed Lois terribly-her cheeks were hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes looked twice their natural size, with the black circles below them. Only the knowledge that her baby's welfare-perhaps his life-depended on her, kept her from giving way entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack of croup, which necessitated a visit from the doctor and further anxiety. Toward afternoon of this third day a man came to put in the telephone, which set them in touch with the unseen world. Girard's voice over it later had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate ending of the mystery.

Everything was excitement-delicacies were bought, in case Justin might like them, Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best "to see dear papa," and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as soon as he got in.

Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in the suddenly sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, at Girard's word that nothing more had been heard, as she was still looking up at him everything turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion; she looked up at Girard and tried to smile with piteous, br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes.

"Ah, don't!" he said, with a quick gesture. His voice had an odd sound, as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with it mingled also a compa.s.sionate tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his whole att.i.tude as he bent over her.

"You're very good to be so sorry for me," she whispered.

He made a swift gesture of protest. "There's one thing I can't stand-to see a woman suffer."

She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she were trying to concentrate her mind:

"You have known sorrow?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. In such moments as these she prayed for Lawson.

"I"-it was Girard who spoke at last-"my mother-Cater said once that he'd told you something about me."

"Yes, I remember."

"It's hard to talk about it, yet sometimes I feel as if I'd like to. You see, I was so little when we drifted off, she and I. I didn't know how to help, how to save her anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since that I ought to have known-I ought to have known!" His hands clenched, his voice had subsided to a groan.

"You were her comfort when you least thought it," said Lois.

"Perhaps; I've always hoped so, in my saner moments. No matter how I should try I could never tell anyone what that time was really like. It seems now as if we were wandering for years, but I don't suppose it was for so very long. We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at night, always trying to keep away from people, when-she thought we were going back to our old home in the South, and that they would prevent us." He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that Ancient Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a forbidden subject, probe it to its haunting depths. "Did Cater tell you how she died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in her arms at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; and I didn't even have a pillow for her when she was dying; it's one of those things you can never make up for-that you can never change, no matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to you when you least expect it."

Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: "But the pain ended in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to know that you grieved."

"Yes, I believe that," he acquiesced simply. "I'm glad you said it now.

I couldn't rest until I got money enough to take her out of her pauper grave and lay her by the side of her own people at home."

"And you have had a pretty hard time."

"Oh, that's nothing!" He squared his shoulders with unconscious reb.u.t.tal of sympathy. "When I was a kid, perhaps-but I get a lot of pleasure out of life."

"But you must be lonely without anyone belonging to you," said Lois, trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. "Wouldn't you be happier if you were married?"

He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a slight flush that seemed to come from the embarra.s.sment of some secret thought. The action, and the change of expression, made him singularly charming.

"Possibly; but the chance of that is small. Women-that is, unmarried women-don't care for my society."

"Oh, oh!" protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as she looked at him, of how much the reverse the truth must be. "But if you found the right woman you might make her care for you."

He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray eyes. "No; there you're wrong. I'd never make any woman care for me, because I'd never want to. If she couldn't care for me without my _making_ her-! I'd have to know, when I first looked at her, that she was _mine_. And if she were not, if she did not care for me herself, I'd never want to make her-never!"

"Oh, oh!" protested Lois again, with interested amus.e.m.e.nt, shattered the next instant as a fragile gla.s.s may be shattered by the blow of a hammer.