Part 17

Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice. Yet it might not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong--that he had bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again on some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down to get the baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her. Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence.

Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion, for fear of waking the baby, in his quest of a pair of gloves in a chiffonier drawer. After finding them, he stopped for a moment in front of her, with that odd, arrested expression once more.

"You don't mind my going out to-night and leaving you?" he murmured. "The doctor ought to have asked _you_, instead; you need it more than I."

"Oh, no, no!" she hastened to reassure. "I don't mind at all, really!" Her eyes gazed up at him, limpidly clear, and emptied of self. "I have to run up and down stairs so many times to baby now that I couldn't go, no matter how much I was asked to. I'm only glad that you will have the distraction--you need it. I hope you'll have a lovely time."

She listened to his descending footsteps, and after a moment or two arose and laid the sleeping child down in his crib.

In the dim light she went about the room, picking up toys and little discarded garments left by the children, folding the clothes away, her tall, graceful figure, in the large curves of its repeated bending and straightening, seeming to exemplify some unpainted Millet-like idea of mother-work, emblematic of its unceasing round. She was hanging up a tiny cloak in the half gloom of her closet, when she heard her husband's step once more stealing into the room, and the next moment saw him beside her.

"What's the matter?" she asked, with quick premonition.

"Nothing, nothing at all; we haven't started yet." He put one arm around her and with the other lifted her face up toward his. "I only came back to tell you"--His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes that were bent on hers. "I can't talk. I can't be as I ought to be, Lois, until all this is over--but--I don't know what's getting into me lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can't take my eyes off you! I went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away from my lovely wife."

Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than our easily imagined bliss, that we can only hide our eyes from it at first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place they were visited by angels.

XXV

Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately--the tireder she was, the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial things became unnaturally distinct. Darkness brought, not a sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her something that it never brought. Lawson's death--Girard--Billy, who was getting a little troublesome lately--the dear little brothers far away, mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and through her mind. Her heart was wrung for Justin and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and support Dosia. Prayer but wakened her further. If she could only sleep and forget!

To-night she heard Justin's return from the automobile ride; apparently the machine had broken down, but the accident seemed only to have added to the zest. Lois was still dressed and waiting up for him. Then Girard came--he had seen the light in the window. Dosia could hear the murmuring of the voices down-stairs--Girard's sent the blood leaping to her heart so fast that she pressed her hands against it. For a moment his face seemed near, his lips almost touched hers--her heart stopped before it went on again. Why had he come now? It seemed suddenly an unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear him, and that she could not. Why, oh, why, had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held her in its chains. She couldn't get dressed and break in upon their intimate conference--or it seemed as if she could not. Besides, he would probably go very soon. But he did not go! After a while she could lie there no longer. She crept out upon the landing of the stairs, and sat there desolately on the top step, "in her long night-gown, sweet as boughs of May," with her little bare feet curled over each other, and her hands clasping the balustrade against which her cheek was pressed, watching and waiting for him to go. The ends of her long fair hair fell into large loose curls where it hung over her shoulder, as she bent to listen--and to listen--and to listen.

"I want to be there, too--I want to be there, too!" she whispered, with quivering lips, in her voice the sobbing catch of a very little child. "I want to be there, too. They're having it all--without me. And I want to be there, too. They might have called me to come down, and they didn't." They might have called her! All her passion, all her philosophy, all her endurance, melted into that one desire. If she had only known at first that he was going to stay so long, she would have dressed and gone down. She could hardly bear it a moment longer.

After a while a door on the landing of the second story below opened, and a little figure crept out--Zaidee. She stood irresolute in the hall, looking down; then she looked up, and, seeing Dosia, ran to her and climbed into her lap, resting her little pigtailed head confidingly against Dosia's warm young shoulder.

"They woke me up," she said placidly. "Did they woke you up, too, Cousin Dosia?"

"Yes," said Dosia, hugging the child close. "Hush! some one is coming; you'll get sent to bed again." This time it was Lois. Her abstracted gaze seemed to take in the two on the upper stairway as a matter of course.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said. "I thought I heard some one talking." She rested on the post below, looking up. "I came to see if you'd take Zaidee in with you for the rest of the night, Dosia. I want to give Justin's room to Mr. Girard."

"Is he going to stay?" asked Dosia.

"Yes. It's too late for him to disturb the Snows, and he's been traveling all day; he's dreadfully tired. He wanted to sleep on the sofa down-stairs, but I wouldn't let him." She was carrying Zaidee, already half asleep again, in her arms as she talked, depositing her in Dosia's bed, while Dosia followed her.

"Did he sell the island?" asked Dosia.

Lois shook her head. "No. They may really sell it next week, but not now--only that will be too late to save the business. Of course, Mr. Girard doesn't know that, and Justin will not tell him--he says Mr. Girard cannot help. Oh, Dosia, when Justin came in from that ride he looked so well, and now--" She covered her face with her hands, before recovering herself. "It's time you were both asleep."

"Can't I help you?" asked Dosia; but Lois only answered indifferently, "No, it's not necessary," and went around making arrangements, while Dosia, with Zaidee nestling close to her, slept at last.

It was late the next morning before Girard came down. Justin had had breakfast, and gone; Lois was up-stairs with the children, and Dosia, who had been tidying up the place, was arranging some flowers in the vases when he strode in. There was no vestige of that sick-hearted, imploring maiden of the night before; no desolate frenzy was to be seen in this trim, neat, capable little figure, clad in blue gingham, that made her throat very white, her hair very fair. Something in Girard's glance seemed to show an instant pleasure that she should be the one to greet him, but he bent anxiously over the watch he held in his hand.

"Will you tell me what time it is? My watch has stopped."

"It's half-past nine," said Dosia.

"Half-past _nine_!" He looked at her in a sort of quick, horrified arraignment. "What do you mean?" His eye fell upon the clock, and conviction seemed to steal upon him against his will. "Heavens and earth, why wasn't I called? On this morning of all others, when every moment's of importance! I thought I asked particularly to be waked early."

"I suppose they thought you were tired and needed the rest," apologized Dosia.

"Needed the rest!" His tone was poignant; he looked outraged; but his anger was entirely impersonal--there was in it even a sort of boyish appeal to her, as if she must feel it, too.

"You had better sit down and have some breakfast."

"Oh, _breakfast_!" His gesture deprecated her evident intention. "Please don't. Thank you very much, but I don't want any breakfast; I only want to get to town."

"There isn't any train for twenty-five minutes, so you might as well sit down and eat," said Dosia firmly. "Come out to this little table on the piazza." She led the way to the screened corner at the end, sweet with the honeysuckle that swung its long loops in the wind, and faced him sternly. "Do you take coffee?"

"Please don't, please don't cook me anything! I'd hate to trouble you." He seemed so distressed that she relented a little.

"A glass of milk and some fruit, then; you'll _have_ to take that."

"Very well--if I must. Can't I get the things myself?"

"No." She ran away to get them for him, with some new joy singing in her heart as she went backward and forward, bringing a pitcher of milk, a glass, a dish of strawberries, some cream, and the sugar, sitting down herself by the table afterward as he ate and drank. He gave her a sudden smile, so surprised and pleased that the color surged in her cheeks.

"I'm not used to this," he said simply. "What is that dress you have on--silk?"

[Illustration: SHE TOOK THE PISTOL FROM HIS RELAXED HOLD]

"No, it's cotton; do you like it?"

"_Very_ much. Oh, please don't get up--Zaidee wasn't calling you. I won't eat another mouthful unless you stay just where you are--please!"

"Well!" said Dosia, with laughing pleasure.

"Besides, I've been wanting to consult you about the Alexanders," he went on, leaning across the table toward her, intimately. "It's so beautiful to see them together, that to feel that they're in trouble distresses me beyond words. You're so near to them both, I thought that perhaps"--His face clouded partly. "Do you know anything about the real state of Mr. Alexander's affairs?"

Dosia shook her head. "No; only that he is very much worried over them."

"He wanted to sell the island; he sent me off on that business lately. He'll sell it sometime, of course, but I don't know how complicating the delay is. He's the kind of man you can't ask; you have to wait until he tells you. You can't _make_ a person have confidence in you. Won't you please have some of these strawberries with me? Do!"

"No; you must eat them _all_," said Dosia, with charming authority, her arms before her on the table, elbow-sleeved, white and dimpled, as she regarded him. He seemed to take up all the corner, against the background of the green honeysuckle in the fresh morning light. With that smile upon his face, he seemed extraordinarily masculine and absorbing, yet appealing, too.

Dosia felt carried out of herself by a sudden heady resolution--or, rather, not a new resolution, but one that she had had in mind for a long, long time, before, oh, before she had even known who this man was. She had planned over and over again how she was to say those words, and now the time had come. She could not sit here with him in this new, sweet friendliness without saying them. She had imagined the scene in so many different ways! When she had gone over it by herself, her cheeks had flushed, her eyes had shone with the tears in them. The words as she spoke them had gone deeply, convincingly, from heart to heart--or perhaps, in an assumed, tremulous lightness, the meaning in her impulse had shown all the clearer to one who understood. For a year and a half the uttered thought had been the climax to which her dreams had led; it would have seemed a monstrous, impossible thing that it had not been reached before.

She began now, in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and conscious in real life.

"I want to thank you for being so kind to me the night of that accident on the train coming up from the South." Poor Dosia instantly felt committed to a mistake. Her eyes fell for a moment on his hand, as it lay upon the table, with a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once pillowed her cheek upon it, and, knowing that he had seen the look, she continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality: "I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for not thanking you before."

The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him, as if in remembrance of something that hurt. "Oh, pray don't mention it," he said, with a formality that matched hers. "It was nothing but what anyone would have done--little enough, anyway."

What happened afterward she did not know, except that in a few minutes he had gone.

She watched him go off down the path with that swift, long, easy step; watched till the last vestige of the gray suit was out of sight--he had a fashion of wearing gray!--before clearing off the table. Then she went and sat on the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet....

She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man until he had shown that he cared for her--it was the unmaidenly, impossible thing. And now--how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more in her whole life, she had this--even if she never had anything more. Yet what had she? Nothing and less than nothing. If he had ever thought of her, if he had ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand trustfully clinging fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had been a sign and a symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him alone--if in some way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once been his, it had gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and yet--so unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which he might never give way, but it was unalterably there--as it was unalterably there with her. All that year at home, when she believed she had not been thinking of him, she really had been thinking of him. We learn to know each other sometimes in long absences. She began to perceive in him now a humility and a pride strangely at variance with each other and both equally at variance with the bright assurance of his outer manner. He gave to every one; he would work early and late for others, in his yearning sympathy and affection: yet he himself, from the very intenseness of his desire for it, stood aloof, and drew back from the insistence of any claim for himself. They might meet a hundred times and grow no closer; they might grow farther and farther away.

Dosia felt that other women must have loved him--how could they have helped it? She had a pang of sorrow for them--for herself it made no difference. If she had pain for all her life afterward, she was glad at this moment that he was worthy to be loved; she need never be ashamed of loving him--he was "good." The word seemed to contain some beautiful comfort and uplifting. No matter what experience he had passed through in his struggle with the world, he had held some simple, honorable, _clean_ quality intact. The Dosia who must always have some heart-warm dream to live by had it now; for all her life she could love him, pray for him. She had always thought that to love was to be happy; now she was to love and be unhappy--yet she would not have it otherwise.

So slight, so young, so lightly dealt with, Dosia had the pathetically clear insight and the power that comes to those who see, not themselves alone, their own desires and hopes, but the universe in which they stand, and view their acts and thoughts in relation to it. She must see Truth, "and be glad, even if it hurt."

The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed in it. Whether she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness and days of heartache afterward, this joy of loving was enough for her to-day--the joy of loving him. She saw in that lovely, brooding thought of him what that first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in with it her knowledge of him now, to make the real man far more imperfect, though far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved her as she loved him, part of that for which she had always sought love would have to be foregone--she could never come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and pour out to him all those hopes and fears, those struggles and mistakes and trials and indignities, the shame and the penitence that had been hers. She could never talk of Lawson--her past must be forever unshriven and uncomforted. Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she could bare her heart in confession; these were the things that touched him on the raw. He "hated the sound of Lawson's name." How many times had George Sutton's face blotted out hers? If he knew _that_! She must forever be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that _she_ could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that it never can be truly one with the beloved, touched her with its sadness, and then slipped away in the thought of him now--not the man who was just to help and protect her with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his forehead--She thought of him with the fond dream-passion of the maiden, that is often the shyest thing on earth, ready to veil itself and turn and elude and hide at the first chance that it may be revealed.

"Dosia! Dosia, where are you?"

Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the sky had grown gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the trouble, all the stress of the world, seemed to encompass her with that tone in the voice of Lois.

XXVI

"Justin has come home ill; he was taken with a chill as soon as he got to town; he came in a carriage from the station. I want you to telephone for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can." Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one who mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what may be happening. "And, Dosia!" she arrested the girl as she was disappearing, "I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the children. They're in the nursery now, but I'll send them down; they had better play outdoors, where he won't hear them."

"Oh, yes, yes; I'll attend to everything," affirmed Dosia hurriedly, going off for her first duty at the telephone, while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home because he is not well argues at once the most serious need for it. It is the public crossing of the danger zone.