CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dosia had come back from the Leverichs’ to a household in which her

presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance.

She came and went unquestioned, practiced interminably, and spent her

evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for

sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough—sleep, where all

one’s sensibilities were dulled, and shame and tragedy forgotten. She

had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before,

owing to their mother’s preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a

drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich

domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest.

Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of

all—as if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting

for the next thing to happen.

Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held

back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She

couldn’t understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get

into an equivocal position with such a man—“really not a gentleman,” as

she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that

you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was

condemning.

The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously

questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich

bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor

was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was

absorbed.

Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory

counting on the sympathy that had helped her before, but she had been

unfortunate in the times for her visits; on the first occasion Mrs.

Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard, and on the

second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird

pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable

house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to

put out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing

when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every

minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, “People

ought to know when to come and when not to.” Dosia got no farther than

the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her

a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she

was not asked to sit down.

Your trouble wasn’t anybody else’s trouble, no matter how kind people

were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her devoted

cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and giving her a

curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own reasons therefor. It

would have hurt her, if anything of that kind could have hurt her very

much. But Dosia was in the half-numb condition which may result from

some great blow or the fall from a great height, save for those moments

when she was anguished suddenly by poignant memories of sharpest

dagger-thrusts, at which her heart still bled unbearably afresh, as when

one remembers the sufferings of the long-peaceful dead which one must,

for all time, be terribly powerless to alleviate.

Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her

great bunches of roses that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly akin

when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every week,

though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his attitude was

changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and interest and

solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other claims Mr.

Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of profit for

himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He required little

entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected faculty for

narrative conversation.

Foolish and inane in amatory “attentions” to young ladies, George was no

fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of current

facts, and could talk about the newsboys’ clubs, or the condition of the

docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or the practical reasons

why motives for reform didn’t reform; and the talk was usually

semi-interesting, and sometimes more—he had the personal intimacy with

his topics which gives them life. Dosia began to find him, if not

exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed. She began genuinely to

like him; he took her thoughts away from herself, while obviously always

thinking of her. She did not even actively dislike those moments when

his pale blue eyes became suffused with admiration or a warmer feeling,

but was, instead, somewhat gratefully touched by it. Not only her

starved vanity but her starved self-respect cried out for food, and he

alone gave it to her.

This Sunday afternoon Dosia—modish and natty in her short walking-skirt

and little jacket of shepherd’s check, and a clumpy, black-velveted,

pink-rosed straw hat—walked companionably beside the square-set figure

of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban road. Dosia had

preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a strong breeze,

although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside trees and grasses

had inspired him with the recollection of a country boy’s calendar—a

pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never too occupied with his

theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her path, or to hold her

little checked umbrella so that the sun should not shine in her eyes, or

to offer her his hand with old-fashioned gallantry if there was any hint

of an obstacle to surmount. The way was long, yet not too long. They

stopped, however, when they reached the summit, to rest for a while

leaning against the top bar of the rail fence on the side of the slope

below the carriage drive, looking down into the green meadows below;

beyond, afar off, there was the white mist-hazed glimpse of a river with

toy houses crowded thickly into the middle distance.

As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia

with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Sutton’s voice suddenly

broke the silence:

“I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday.”

Dosia’s heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that

anybody had spoken his name since he left. She had prayed for him every

night—how she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any other reach

than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap... fear was in it—fear of

any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting tone of the person

who told it, which she would be powerless to resent; fear of awakening

in herself the echo of that struggle of the past.

“He’s at the mines, isn’t he?” she questioned, in that tone which she

had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him.

“Yes; but I don’t believe he’s working there yet. He seems to be mostly

engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds like him,

doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance.

“I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there,” pursued Mr. Sutton.

“It’s the worst kind of a life for him. He’s an awfully clever fellow;

he could do anything, if he wanted to. I don’t know any man I admire

more, in certain ways, than I do Barr.”

Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson’s clever brilliancy, his

social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he himself

had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper bond.

“I’ve known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long before he

came to this place,” he continued.

“Oh, did you?” cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some

words of Mrs. Leverich’s returned to her—“Mr. Sutton brought Lawson

home last night.” So that was the reason! Her voice was tremulous as she

went on: “It is very unusual to hear anyone speak as you do of Mr. Barr.

Everybody here seems to look down on—to despise him.”

“Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick,” said George, with an unexpected

crude energy; his good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous

expression. “Men talking about him who themselves——” He looked down

sidewise at Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more

respectable than he,—respectability might be said to be his cult,—yet

he lived in daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein

“ladies” were a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of

confidence by the fact of George Sutton’s presence. His feeling for Barr

and toleration of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that

George himself had also been brought up in one of those small, dull

country towns in which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing

houses have no home in them for a boy and his friends.

“If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all

right,” he asserted shortly. “Perhaps we’d better be going home; it

looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of

difference in this world, Miss Dosia.”

“I suppose it does; I’ve never had it,” said Dosia simply.

“Maybe you’ll have it some day,” returned Mr. Sutton significantly. His

pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road

together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawson’s name had

created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm

throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; _he_ prized

her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show it. He

went on now with genuine emotion: “I know one thing; if—if I had a

wife, she’d never have to wish twice for anything I could give her, Miss

Dosia.”

“She ought to care a good deal for you, then,” suggested Dosia, picking

her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little black ties

finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Sutton’s hand ever on

the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow.

“No, I wouldn’t ask that; I’d only ask her to let me care for _her_. I

think most men expect too much from their wives,” said George. “I don’t

think they’ve got the right to ask it. And I don’t think a man has any

right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that’s

my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did

me the honor of accepting my hand,”—Mr. Sutton’s voice faltered with

honest emotion,—“I’d spend my life trying to make her happy, I would

indeed, Miss Dosia. I’d take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my

means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her.”

“I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known,” said Dosia,

with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off,

outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book.

Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she

had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first,

and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted

with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true

and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his

uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love—in short,

“John,” the honest, patient, constant “John” of fiction. His affection

for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim

her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him,

which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really “John”—Dosia

half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman.

The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile

overspread her face.

“Here’s the very lady for you now,” she remarked flippantly, as Ada

Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark

cloud in the background, on her way to a friend’s house from service at

the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada’s cheeks took on a not

unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton’s

glance,—a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,—before she went

down the side-road.

Mr. Sutton’s face reddened also. “Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be very

charming, but I wouldn’t marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl left

in the world. I give you my word I wouldn’t. _You_ ought to know——”

“We’ll have to hurry, or we’ll be caught in the rain,” interrupted

Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an

affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the house

and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and

Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached the

piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois greeted

Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded the

accustomed dead level.

“Do come in, you’ll be caught in the rain if you go on. Can’t you stay

to a Sunday night’s tea with us?”

“Oh, do,” urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze.

Lois’ hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance

lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She

felt a new tie with Mr. Sutton—they both sympathized with Lawson,

believed in him!

She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little

round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverich’s, which

somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look like a

cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of

the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red

lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort as she

cuddled within Dosia’s half-bare round white arm, while Mr. Sutton,

drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody

else, his round face getting brick-red at times with suppressed emotion,

though he tried to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory

conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin

alternately played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in the

intervals of discourse.

Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to

darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming storm;

the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down again; the

trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and

white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently from where Dosia

sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side of the street—a

tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy, erect carriage of a

soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite the house, looked over

at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to stop

the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he crossed over with

a quick, decided step.

“Why, here’s Girard!” cried Justin, rising with alacrity. His voice came

back from the hall. “Awfully glad you took us on your way. Leverich told

you where I lived? You’ll have to stay now until the storm is over.

Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course. Dosia——”

“I have already met Mr. Girard,” said Dosia, turning very white, but

speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the

half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he

bowed with politely murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half

across the room, he seated himself by Justin.

A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt

before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a

sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met

hers—resentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and

lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head

high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched—though he turned

from her a moment to say:

“Weren’t you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard?”

“Yes; I thought you didn’t see me,” said the other lightly, himself

turning to respond to a question of Justin’s, which left the other group

out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed himself

with ardor.

[Illustration: _Mr. Sutton leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else_]

There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through

large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there talking

to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his chin

leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a distinction possessed by no

one else in the room. Even Justin, with all his engaging personality,

seemed somehow a little narrow, a little provincial, by the side of

Girard.

Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the

dining-room,—with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following

after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him

away,—came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if

he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As

a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he

much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in

women’s society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of

shyness, of deficiency—perhaps partly caused by the conscious

disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born, but

it was a feeling with which he would have been the last to be credited,

and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like many

very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of attractiveness

himself.

It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation,

with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light

over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and the

water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room beyond

was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the round

mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled

lilies-of-the-valley in the center.

The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an

odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this

commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed

to be only a veil for the things of the spirit—subtle

cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions

tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though one

knew not what. To Dosia’s swift observation, Girard had lost some of the

brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the ball; he

looked as if he had been under some harassing strain. Her first

impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was reinforced

now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance. Why, then,

had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her rescuer, the

hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the shrine of her

memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger. Had he known? He

must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson who had hurt her the

most! She could not hear what he said though the room was small; he and

Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was evident that he frankly

admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as he talked, Dosia became

curiously aware that from his position directly across the room he was

covertly watching her as she sat consentingly listening to George

Sutton, whose round face was bending over very near, his thick coat

sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles of hers as it rested on the carved

arm of the little sofa.

She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its big

blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the simple

rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held.

Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia’s bidding, to alter the shade, and she moved

a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next instant

moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his range of

vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not her

imagining—she felt the strong play of unknown forces; the gaze of those

two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most obviously

so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little closer to

Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was, indeed, in that

stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any concealment, and for

which other men feel a shamefaced contempt, though a woman, even while

she derides, holds it in a certain respect as a foolish manifestation of

something inherently great, and a tribute to her power. To Dosia’s

indifference, in this strange dual sense of another and resented

excitement,—an excitement like that produced on the brain by some

intolerably high altitude,—Mr. Sutton’s attentions seemed to breathe

only of a grateful warmth; she felt that he was being very, very kind.

She could ask him to do anything for her, and he would do it, no matter

what it was, just because she asked him. He was planning now a day on

somebody’s yacht, with Lois, of course; and “What do you say, Miss

Dosia—can’t we make it a family party, and take the children too?” he

asked, with eager divination of what would please this lovely thing.

“Yes, oh, why can’t you take _us_?” cried Zaidee, trembling with

delight.

The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole place

was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosia’s voice was

heard saying:

“I’ll get my photograph now, if you want it.” She rose and left the

room,—she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,—and Zaidee ran

over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that had lain

against Dosia rosy warm.

“You had better light the lamp, Justin,” said Lois, and then, “Oh,

you’re not going?” as Girard stood up.