CHAPTER NINE

The closed door did not keep out the sounds below. Dosia could hear

Justin’s voice upraised toward his only son, and Lois’ pleading

“_Please_, Justin!”

“Be quiet, Lois; I’ll settle this. Go down-stairs.”

“I want dinky orter.” The child’s voice was high.

“You have just had a drink of water; lie still.”

“Redge ’ants ’noder dinky orter.”

“Do you hear me? Lie still.”

“Let me take him, Justin; I’m sure he isn’t well. I——”

Dosia could hear her step getting fainter in the distance, and could

imagine the look from Justin that had commanded her obedience. There was

a definite masculine authority about him before which, on those rare

occasions when he chose to exert it, every woman-soul in the house bowed

down with the curious submission inherited from barbaric ages. Only the

son and heir rebelled openly, with a firmness caught from the same

blood.

It took a hard tussle to conquer Redge. The mother down-stairs,

vibrating with sympathy for her child, could not understand Justin’s

attitude, or why he was so much more severe with the boy than he had

ever been with Zaidee.

Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess,

toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry.

But the boy was different. Civilized man still usually lives in the

outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance

of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature

in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he

knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it.

His “Lie still, you rascal, or I’ll make you,” voiced in its sternness

an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee.

Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down

once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife

to kiss her good-by.

“Are you going out again?” Her voice had a dull patience in it and her

eyes refused to meet his.

“Yes; did you want me for anything special?”

He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue

eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by

his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at

Lois’ insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of

the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity.

Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment.

Justin’s discarded one had passed through every stage of decent

finesse—the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined

sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife

in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship

still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude

to make a new and opulent person of him.

“No, of course I don’t want you for anything special”—she spoke in a

monotone. “I only thought you were going to stay home.”

“I’ve got to go to Leverich’s, and I want to speak to Selden about the

house first. I promised him I’d stop there.”

They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the

hill, and Selden was the architect.

“You have been out every night this week”—there was a suspicion of

tears in her voice. “I do so hate to be left alone.”

“You have Dosia.”

“Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I can’t make out

that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she

looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home

this evening—won’t you, dear?”

“I can’t—I wish I could.” He said the words mechanically, for he was

burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. “I must be at

Selden’s by half-past eight.’

“It is only a quarter-past now—you can walk there in five minutes. Do

sit down for a moment. I don’t get any chance to talk to you at all, and

you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any

more—except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night.”

Lois was sitting under the rays of the lamp. She wore a scarlet gown and

held a piece of white embroidery in her lap. She seemed to absorb all

the light in the room, and to leave the rest of it dark by contrast—her

rosed cheeks, her white eyelids dropped over her work, the bronze waves

of her hair melted into the gloom of the background. She was beautiful,

but Justin did not care to look at her; it was even momentarily

repugnant to him to do so. He sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his

hat against it. She lacked the one thing that made a woman beautiful to

him; absorbed as he was in his own plans, his own life he felt a

loss——

Her remark about the children made him wince. He was a man who loved his

children, and he had not only been obliged to lose most of the sweetness

of their possession lately,—the sweetness that consists in watching the

unfolding, day by day, of the flower-petals of childhood,—but when he

had the rare chance of being in their society he could not enjoy it; a

hitherto unsuspected capriciousness and irritation laid the precious

moments waste. He could hear Zaidee’s gentle little voice repeating her

mother’s perfunctory extenuation: “Poor daddy’s nervous; come away,

Redge!”

“I hope you’ll tell Mr. Selden that I must have a closet under the

stairs,” said Lois suddenly.

“He’ll put one there if he can.”

“If he can! Justin, I spoke about it from the very first. I don’t want

the house if he can’t put the closet in. I——”

“All right. I’ve got to go now.” If he had cared to think about it, he

might have wondered why she wanted him to wait for such last words as

these. As the door closed behind him, she let her embroidery fall from

her fingers and listened to the last sound of his footsteps echoing far

into the frosty night. There was a firm directness in it as it carried

him from her.

The overcoat had not belied its appearance as the harbinger of

prosperity and the forerunner of large expenditures—of which the house

on the hill was one. The typometer was having a boom, the orders for it

were phenomenal; the factory was working night and day. Even with the

principle of trying to be rigidly conservative in estimates, it was hard

not to count on an unvaried continuance of the miraculous; everybody

knows of instances when it has continued, or seemed to. In reality,

there is no such continuous miracle; a succession of adapted conditions

has to be keenly worked out to produce the effect of continuity. In a

sense, the Typometer Company was aware of this, and was consequently

assimilating gradually smaller ventures with the main one.

The state of mind in which Justin had gone to take possession of the

factory that bright November morning was as different in graduation from

that present with him now as the single simply clear notes of the flute

are from the twanging strings and blended diversity of a whole

orchestra. Everything hinged on something else, and there was nothing

that did not hinge on money. Amid the immense daily complications of

enlarging the business was the nagging daily complication of keeping

enough of a balance in the bank in spite of the continual outgo. Money

came in lavishly at times, but the outgo had to be enormous; it was as

the essential bread upon the waters that insured its own return a

hundredfold. Materials can be bought with a leeway of credit, but

“hands” must be paid off on Saturday night; there had been one Saturday

when there had been what Leverich called “tall hustling” by him and

Martin and Alexander, before those hands could be paid. Justin had

thought of his backers as men of millions—with that easy, assured

confidence one has in regard to the superficially known; the millions

were in the concrete, solid and golden—a bottomless store in reserve.

He had gradually come to realize that the millions were a fluctuant

quality, running like quicksilver from side to side, here in one place,

there in another, as the various needs of corporations called them. Both

Martin and Leverich were past masters in the art of making a little

butter cover many slices of bread; to have to appropriate money to cover

an emergency was a daily expedient—the ability to do so ranked as a

part of one’s assets. Lois could not understand why, when such large

sales were being made, there were not larger returns now; the “business”

seemed to swallow up everything, and more than all else her husband. To

his luminous, excited brain, the different phases of trade passed and

repassed as pictures in a lighted transparency, riveting an exhilarated

attention; all else was in blurred darkness and must wait until after

the show for recognition. He felt it inexpressibly tiresome and unkind

of Lois to wish to engross him, when he was laboring for her welfare and

the children’s.

Lois Alexander, who had a household to look after, servants to keep in

order, children to be attended to, who was subject to the claims of

social functions, clubs, friends, and affairs generally, was through

everything absorbed in her husband to a degree incredible to anyone but

a woman. His attitude toward her had come to occupy the substrata of her

thoughts morning, noon, and night. To have him leave with a shade less

of affection for her in the morning farewell left her with a sick

feeling throughout the day; everything done in those next hours was

merely to fill up the time until his return, that she might see then if

her exacting soul might be satisfied. Sometimes she reproached him

tearfully before he left, and then it was not only with a sick feeling

that she spent the day, but with an absolutely intolerant pain, because

she must wait until night to set herself right with him again. At those

times she could not derive any satisfaction even from her children—her

only refuge from weeping herself into a sick-headache was to go to town

and shop exhaustingly. One cannot well shed tears in the crowded

streets, or before a clerk who is showing one goods over a counter. But

when she went shopping too many days in succession the children showed

the effects of it in the lawlessness which creeps in in a mother’s

absence.

She could not understand why the morning reproach and the evening

retraction had grown alike unimportant to her husband; after the first

surprise and solicitude occasioned by this recurrent state, he had grown

to regard it as something to be borne with like any other normal

annoyance,—like fog, rain, or mosquitoes,—that measurably lessened the

joy of the day, but upon which no action of his had any bearing. A man

must have patience with his wife’s complainings, and try always to

remember the delicacy of her bodily strength and the many calls upon it,

which made little things a grievance to her. He himself never

complained; complaint was in itself distasteful to him.

Lois, left alone now, with Dosia up-stairs, felt herself relapsing into

the dark mood she dreaded, when there came the welcome sound of the

door-bell. A moment later the maid took up a card to Dosia on which was

inscribed the name of Mr. Angevin L. Cater. He was scrupulously attired

in an old “dress suit,” the conventional lines of which, with the stiff

expanse of shirt-front, seemed to make his yellow angularity of feature

still more pronounced. He looked so oddly out of place in the little

drawing-room, where he sat talking to Lois, his long limbs tucked back

as far as possible under the small spindle-legged sofa, and one arm

stretched out embracingly over the green cushions at his side, and yet

he looked so oddly natural and homelike, too, that Dosia felt a swift

pleasure in his presence. At her entrance, he disentangled himself from

the sofa and stood up to take the two hands which she had extended to

him before she knew it, regarding her the while with admiring

earnestness.

“Well, you are all right,” he said, after the first greetings; “Miss

Dosia, you certainly are all right. If I was back in the South I’d say

just what I thought of you, but I’m afraid to up here; folks are too

careful about complimentin’ for me. When I see a young lady like

you,—or like Mrs. Alexander, here,—” he rose and bowed gallantly, “I

want to get straight up and tell you just how handsome you look. There’s

nothing so beautiful on God’s earth to me as a beautiful woman—unless

it’s a mother. A mother doesn’t need to have a complexion if she’s got

the mother spirit shinin’ out of her. I had a mother once—a better

never lived. She’s dead.”

“That is very sad,” said Lois, in the pause that followed this

announcement, keeping back an almost irresistible smile. Both she and

Dosia felt the relief of light and impersonal conversation after painful

communing.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the visitor, sitting, as before, with his long legs

back under the little sofa and one long arm embracing the top of it.

“How is your wife?” asked Dosia. “Have you seen her lately?”

“I was home for a week around Christmas-time,” answered Mr. Cater. “It’s

sort of unsettling, though, to go home for a short period—at least, I

find it so. I don’t know _as_ it pays, except as something to look

forward to before you’ve done it; there’s a good deal in that. My wife

lives with her family; they have a right smart amount of trouble, and it

seems like it always saves up for a real spell when I get home.”

“I should think she would want to stay here with you,” said Dosia.

Mr. Cater cleared his throat apologetically. “Well, the fact is,” he

conceded, “my wife’s powerful fond of her family. There’s nothing

against a woman being fond of her family.”

“Oh, no,” said Lois.

“No, ma’am. My wife’s a mighty fine woman. If I’d had the luck to belong

to her family—but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to

me crops up, I expect, when I ain’t countin’ on it. She did bring the

children and try livin’ up here in a flat the first year I went into the

business, but it made her so pinin’ she had to go back; she wasn’t used

to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_

know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin’ sort of old and agin’,

and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin’ her, I

reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin’ a

gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he’d promised

her to quit. Her sister’s husband, Jim Pierce, he’d lit out before. Now,

there’s the other brother, Satterson—he’s a mighty fine fellow, six

foot two in his stockin’s, but he doesn’t _do_ anything. Just drinks. My

wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don’t blame any woman

for being devoted to her family—shows heart.”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an

inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory

relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater’s earnings; she knew his wife as a

pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth.

“After all, there isn’t much in a man, when you get down to it, to

interest a woman,” continued Mr. Cater impartially. “She wants him to

think of _her_; of co’se it’s his business to. I had a sort of set idea

to begin on—but there’s nothin’ in life so wreckin’ as a set idea; I’ve

found that out. You’ve got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and

turn it so’s you can see to keep on your windin’ way without runnin’

down your fellow-bein’s—isn’t that so? I don’t blame any woman for

findin’ out that a man doesn’t always make up for home and mother—I

don’t know that I always yearn for my own society.” His inscrutable

expression changed to a smile. “I reckon you won’t yearn for it, either,

if I go on talkin’ in this way.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” said Dosia, dimpling. “Did you see my father and

mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?”

“Why—about the same as usual,” replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a

swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly

materialized itself to Dosia. “I promised them I’d come and see you—and

meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia’s comin’ here that I got

acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander,” he continued, turning to

Lois. “He’s a mighty fine man. He and I, we’re choppin’ at the same log,

so to speak, only he’s takin’ side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon

he’s got a pretty good backin’?”

“Oh, yes,” affirmed Lois.

“Yes, ma’am. Of course, he doesn’t talk about it. I haven’t seen Mr.

Alexander much for a couple of weeks; he’s been busy and I’ve been

busy—we lunch at the same place sometimes. I know some of his

friends—Mr. Leverich for one—slightly in the way of business. Mr.

Martin—Mr. Martin’s a man _nobody_ knows more’n slightly. You would not

think he was such a smart business man, would you? He’s so sort of small

and feeble-looking, and has such a little lisping voice. But _I_ don’t

care for any dealings with him; those little clawlike hands of his rake

in all they touch. Now you think I’m hard on him, don’t you?” He

hesitated, and then went on, looking with a veiled shrewdness at Lois:

“Martin sort of reminds me of somethin’ that happened with my two boys

when I was home at Christmas. They’re little shavers, Mrs. Alexander,

right cute, too, if they are mine. Miss Dosia, here, she can tell you.”

“They are dear little fellows,” said Dosia warmly.

“They were going up-stairs to bed. I was behind ’em, and Angy—that’s

the eldest, he’s six—was stoppin’ the way; so I says to him, ‘What’s

stoppin’ you, son?’ and he answers: ‘Oh, I’m carryin’ up Jim’s cake and

my cake, and I’m eatin’ _Jim’s cake now_.’ That’s like Martin for all

the world—always carryin’ somebody’s cake for ’em, and swallowin’ it on

the way. Well, doesn’t it seem good to be lookin’ at you again, Miss

Dosia! But I’m sorry Alexander isn’t in, too.”

“Oh, I hope he’ll come before you leave,” returned Lois. It seemed a

foregone conclusion that he must, when it was discovered that the

nine-forty-five train back to town was then on the point of departure,

half a mile away, and the next did not leave until eleven-fifteen. There

was a genuineness about Mr. Cater which could not fail to win responsive

recognition, but the contemplation of an inexorably fixed time over

which conversation must be spread has an indescribably paralyzing effect

on spontaneity. Like many talkative people, Mr. Cater developed a way,

when you counted upon his garrulousness, of suddenly becoming silent.

Lois busied herself in collecting the materials for refreshment, while

Dosia and he conversed laboriously and minutely about the denizens of

Balderville, to the third and fourth generation. The very word “home”

carried such suggested association that Dosia half forgot that it had

never been one for her, and that to leave its semblance had been a joy.

When the little meal was ready, Lois manipulated the chafing-dish and

Dosia served. Mr. Cater moved to the little chair drawn up with the

others by the small mahogany table, and relaxed once more.

“Well, this is comfort,” he said, with a sort of wistful gratitude.

“I’ve been thinkin’ ’twas pretty inconsiderate of me to miss that train,

but I’m sort of glad now that I did. When I see you two beautiful young

ladies takin’ all this trouble for me—well, I just can’t tell you how I

appreciate it; sort of warms me up inside.”

“You must get pretty lonely sometimes,” said Lois kindly, with a sudden

sympathy for something in his tone.

He nodded slowly. “Well, yes, I do; but I’ve quit thinkin’ of it, as a

rule. I reckon I’ve got about as much as I deserve in this world, when

you come to sizin’ things up. If you get to pityin’ yourself, you slump;

you slump all _to_ pieces—ain’t no mortal good to yourself nor anybody

else. I’ve found _that_ out.”

“You seem to find out a good many things,” said Lois, with a twinge of

assent.

“Well, yes, I do.” His face relaxed in a pleased smile. “Keep addin’ to

my collection daily; but it isn’t cheap, no more than other

collectin’—costs money. Girard says—by the way, I never asked you if

you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the

train. I didn’t know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this

rabbit’s more’n good. I haven’t had one like it since I was with Girard

last year.”

“No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois a little wearily.

“Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought to. He’s a _man_.

Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s related to the Wilmots, Judge

Wilmot’s family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came.

His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their

money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired of it myself.

I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money—or are

a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that’s

risin’ into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible

to walk on somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.”

“How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia.

“Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody ever

was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go through what he has,

though it’s made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after

they’d moved ’way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard

time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t

know that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what her mind

got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died at a little town in

Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn’t anyone to look after the

child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then,

and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat

him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor

little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ mother, used to crawl into

the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry

his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever

talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a

snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas

story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into

the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_.”

“How did he get away?” asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the

boy’s little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although

the hurt had been over so long ago.

“Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn’t tell me the whole

of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he

went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own

people, too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba—I guess some of the

wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on

some government business; he’s a personal friend of the President. He’s

young, too, not more’n twenty-eight. He’s bound to get ahead at whatever

he sets himself to. But he’s got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly

kill a big Swede once that was wallopin’ a sick horse. What you laughin’

at, Miss Dosia? I reckon we’re all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn’t

_that_ time, is it?” He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at

the clock that was striking.

“I’m afraid it is,” affirmed Lois.

“Then I’ve got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. ’Tisn’t

manners to eat and run, I know, but—” He had risen and was swiftly

putting on his coat in the hall. “Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can

get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin’.

Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your

hospitality; I do _so_. I—” He was loping down the path already, his

long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight.

Dosia called after him mischievously, “You’d better wait until the

twelve-three,” before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air

was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the

lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Cater’s presence had been.

She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains

of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois

wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having

taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time

than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the

interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have

relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a

sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any

reminiscence whatever.

He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and surprised to find

traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late.

“Mr. Cater has been here,” announced Lois, in explanation.

“Cater! I’m sorry to have missed him.”

“He was very sorry you were not at home. He did not go until eleven, and

I was sure you would be in before that.”

“Well, I meant to be.”

“Yes; he was telling us so many things. Justin,”—something prompted her

against her will to say what had been rankling in her memory,—“he

thinks Mr. Martin is like a crab, and that he takes people in between

his claws and pinches them. I wish you’d be careful.”

Steel seemed swiftly to incase her husband. “He will not pinch me, at

all events,” he said shortly. After a moment’s pause he made an effort

to return to his former manner, but with an altered tone:

“I’m sorry I was kept so late. I was some time consulting with Selden

about the house; you can have the closet. After that we were all talking

at Leverich’s. He had a friend out there to-night, a fine young fellow,

extraordinarily interesting; he was giving us points on the South

American trade. He’s going to be of great use to us, he goes down there

again in the spring. He’s a fine-looking fellow, by the way, tall and

well set up; he reminds me of Brent, Lois—you remember him? The same

kind of bright, resolute face; only this man’s browner.”

Conscious of a perverse irresponsiveness in his wife, Justin turned to

Dosia, who had slipped back into the room to look under the table and

chairs for a blue bow that had fallen from her hair. She stood now in

the doorway with it in her hand.

“He came up from the South the same day you did last fall, Dosia, he was

in that wreck. It must have been a horrible thing.” Justin broke off at

the retrospection of the narrative.

“Yes,” said Dosia in a whisper. She leaned against the door for support.

“You were fortunate to get off so well.” Absorbed in his own recital,

Justin did not observe her. “He was going from one car to another when

the train went off the trestle—I don’t wonder you would never talk

about it, Dosia. He was able to help some of the survivors. There was a

poor young girl who was alone, like you—he didn’t know what became of

her; he was ill himself in the hospital for two weeks afterwards. His

description of the whole thing was extraordinarily vivid.” Justin was

now bolting windows and putting out lights as he talked. “You two girls

must go to bed at once; it’s nearly twelve.”

“What was his name?” asked Dosia.

“His name? Why, I thought I’d told you. His name’s Girard—Bailey

Girard.”