The Wayfarers Part 37

"Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, it connects at Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an hour to get to the place; I've looked it up in the time-table. I'll be back here again by ten o'clock. I--" She stopped with a sudden intense motion of listening, then put the child from her and ran across the hall to the opposite room.

When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: "Justin's gone to sleep now. The doctor says he will be under the influence of the anodynes until morning. Mrs. Bently is in there-I sent for her; she says she'll stay until I get back." Mrs. Bently was a woman of the plainer cla.s.s, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. "If the children wake up they won't be afraid with her; but you'll be here, anyway."

"Leave the baby with me," implored Dosia.

"No, I can't-suppose I were detained? _Then_ I'd go crazy! He won't be any bother, he's so little and so light."

"Very well, then; I'll go, too," stated Dosia in desperation. "I am not needed here. You must have some one with you if you have baby! Let me go, Lois! You _must!_"

"Oh, very well, if you like," responded Lois indifferently. But that the suggestion was an unconscious relief to her she showed the next moment, as she gave some directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries and some biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the baby if it grew chilly.

The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be lighted and the gas turned down, and the new maid impressed with the fact that they would be back at a little after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin as he slept-his head thrown forward a little on the pillow, his right hand clasped, and his knees bent as one supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois stooped over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit.

Then the two women walked down the street toward the station, Lois absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia distracted, confused, half a.s.senting and half dissenting to the expedition.

"Are you sure Mr. Larue will be at Collingswood?" she asked anxiously.

"Justin saw him Sat.u.r.day. He said he was going out there then for the summer."

So far it would be all right, then. They had pa.s.sed the Snows' house, and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of life there; she hesitated, and then went on. As they got beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked back, and saw Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza.

"I'll catch up to you in a moment," she said to Lois, and ran back quickly.

"Miss Bertha!"

"Why, Dosia, my dear, I didn't see you; don't speak loud!" Miss Bertha's face, her whispering lips, her hands, were trembling with excitement.

"We've been under quite a strain, but it's all over now-I'm sure I can tell _you_. Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr.

Sutton has just proposed to Ada-in the sitting-room. We left them the parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. Mother's white shawl is in there, and I haven't been able to get it."

"Oh!" said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance of the fact.

"Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be in later?"

"No, not until to-morrow night," said Miss Bertha as blankly, but Dosia had already gone on. She did not know whether she were relieved or sorry that Girard was not there. She did not know what she had meant to say to him, but it had seemed as if she _must_ see him. She caught up to Lois and the baby in a few steps, and drew back into the station as Billy pa.s.sed it. She had felt anxiously as if some one ought to know where they were going, but not Billy-Billy, who was always now either too melancholy or too joyous, as she rebuffed or relented.

Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit seemed to be wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as the darkness that was gathering around them. Only, when they were at last in the train, she threw back her veil and smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief in the smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness of heart to Dosia.

"He will lend me the money," said Lois, with a grateful, touching confidence that seemed to shut out every conventional, every worldly suggestion, and to breathe only of her need and the willingness of a friend to help-not alone for the need's sake, but for hers.

Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see him; his bearded lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, piercing eyes, were not attractive to her. The whole thing was very bewildering.

It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, where they changed cars for the little branch road that went past Collingswood-a signal station, as the conductor who punched their tickets impressed on Lois.

Haledon itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of people on the platform continually coming and going under the electric lights. As Lois and Dosia waited for their train, an automobile dashed up, and a man and a woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took their place among those who were waiting for the westbound express. The woman, large and elegantly gowned, had something familiar in her outline as she turned to her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair mustache-the man who lately had been seen everywhere with Mrs.

Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia shrank back into the shadow.

The light struck full athwart the large, full-blown face of Myra as she turned to the man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly cognizant, smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar between his teeth.

Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shame-she had seen something that should have been hidden in darkness. They were going off together.

All those whispers about Mrs. Leverich had been true.

There were only a few people in the shaky, rattling little car when Lois and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in his long cloak, slept all the way. It was but seven miles to Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran after him.

"Mr. Larue's place is near here, isn't it?" she called.

"Yes, over there to the right," said the youth, pointing down the board walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, "about a quarter of a mile down.

You'll know when you come to the gates. They're big iron ones."

"Isn't there any way of riding?"

"I guess not," said the youth, and disappeared into the woods on a bicycle.

"Oh, it will be only a step," said Lois, starting off in the direction indicated, followed perforce by Dosia with the hand-bag, both walking in silence.

The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact daylight possibility, had been growing gradually a thing of the dark, unknown, fantastic. A faint remnant of the fading light remained in the west, vanishing as they looked at it. Above the treetops a pale moon hung high; there seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that iron track curved out of sight.

The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with that strangely eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big iron gates were reached at last, showing a long winding drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue had built a house for his bride, living in it these summers when she was away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess tacitly before the world that he was unable to make his wife care for him-a darkened, desolate, lonely life, as dark and as desolate as this house seemed now.

An undefined dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently:

"The walk has not really been very long. We'll probably drive back. It's odd that there are no lights, but perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah, there's a light!"

Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung on the cornice above-it was the moon and not a lamp that had made it. They ascended the piazza steps; there was no one there.

"There is a knocker at the front door," said Lois. She pounded, and the noise vibrated terrifyingly through the stillness. At the same instant a sc.r.a.ping on the gravel walk behind them made them turn. It was the boy on the bicycle, who, having sped back to them, was wheeling around at the moment that he might lose no impetus in retracing his way, while he leaned over to call:

"Mr. Larue ain't there. The woman who closed up the house told me he had a cable from his wife, and he sailed for Europe this afternoon. She says, do you want the key?"

"No," said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared.

"I wish he had waited until we could have asked him some questions,"

said Dosia, vexed. "Don't let's stay here; it's too dark and too dreadfully lonely under these trees. We had better get back to the station and wait for the train."

"I suppose so," said Lois drearily. This, then, was the end of her exaltation-for this she had pa.s.sionately nerved herself! There was to be neither the warmth of instant comprehension of her errand, nor the frank giving of aid when necessity had been pleaded; there was nothing.

She shifted the baby over to the other shoulder, and they retraced their way, which now seemed familiar and short. There was, at any rate, a light on a tall pole in front of the little station, although the station itself was deserted; they seated themselves on the bench under it to wait. The train was not scheduled for nearly an hour yet. The watch that Lois carried showed that it was a quarter to nine.

"Oh, if I could only fly back!" she groaned. "I don't see how I can wait-I don't see how I can wait! Oh, why did I come?"

"Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of," said Dosia, with the terribly self-accusing feeling now that she ought to have prevented the expedition at the beginning. She got up to go into the little box of a house, in search of a time-table. As she pa.s.sed the tall post that held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper, and read aloud the words written on it below the date:

NOTICE

NO TRAINS WILL RUN ON THIS ROAD TO-NIGHT AFTER 8.30 P.M., ON ACCOUNT OF REPAIRS

Dosia and Lois looked at each other with the blankness of despair-the frantic, forlornly heroic impulse, uncalculating of circ.u.mstances, began to show itself in all its piteous woman-folly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN