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 passed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing

him walk in. However, nobody 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 apron-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

coarsened in some way—his cheeks sagged, in his eyes was an unpleasant

admission that he must bluster 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 rebuttal 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 attitude 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, brimming 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 compassionate

tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his

whole attitude 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 rebuttal

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 embarrassment 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 amusement, shattered the

next instant as a fragile glass may be shattered by the blow of a

hammer.

The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, closing the

intervening door behind him. The curtain of anxiety, lifted for

breathing-space for a moment, hung over them again somberly, like a

pall. Where was Justin?

The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on Girard’s movements;

his low, murmuring voice told nothing. When he returned to where they

stood, his face was impassive.

“Nothing new; I’m just going to town for a couple of hours, that’s all.”

“Oh, must you leave us?”

“I’m coming back, if you’ll let me.” He bent over Lois with that earnest

look which seemed somehow to insure protection. “I want you to let me

stay down-stairs here all night, if you will; I’m going to make

arrangements to get a special message through, no matter what time it

comes, and I’ll sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you and

Miss Linden can sleep.”

“Oh, I’d be so glad to have you here! Redge has that croupy cough again.

But you can’t sit up,” said Lois.

“Why not? It’s luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of

books around. I’ll be back in a couple of hours without fail.”

A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could

have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he

gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois,

who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the

typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated

man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a

decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his

body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of

being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely

at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and

handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating

himself.

“Thank you very much,” said Lois. “This is the money, I suppose. I’m

sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself, I thought you

might send me a check.”

Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. “That’s the

trouble, Mrs. Alexander, we can’t send any checks, Mr. Alexander is the

one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexander’s name. I went to Mr.

Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things, but

he doesn’t seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us

out easily enough if he wanted to. I—there’s no use keeping it back,

Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay

away. He ought to be home.”

“Why, yes,” said Lois.

“Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant

position.” Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his

gaze on the ground. “The business requires the most particular

management at the moment—the most particular. I—” He raised his eyes

with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that

this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth

by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the

daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at

Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she

did—knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better.

He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: “Mrs. Alexander, your

husband and I have worked together for a year and a half now, with never

a word between us. I’m ready to swear by him any moment, if I’ve got him

to swear by. I’ll back him up in anything, no matter what, if it’s his

say-so—we’ve pulled through a good many tight places. But I can’t do it

alone; it’s madness to try. If he doesn’t show up, I’d better close the

place down at once.”

“Why do you say this to me?” asked Lois, shrinking a little.

“Why? because,—Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to mince words; if you

know where your husband is, for God’s sake, get word to him to come

back—every minute is precious. He may be ill—Heaven knows he had

enough to make him so; my wife knows the strain I’ve been through, she

says she wonders I’m alive,—but he can’t look after his health now. If

he’s on top of ground, he’s got to _come_. I’ve put every cent I own

into this business. I haven’t drawn my whole salary, even, for months. I

don’t know what reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustn’t

give out now.”

“Mr. Harker!” cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, who had come

forward. “What does he mean?”

“She doesn’t know where her husband is,” said the girl convincingly. Her

eyes and Mr. Harker’s met. The somber eagerness faded out of his; he

sighed and rose.

“Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think I’ll hurry to catch

the next train; I haven’t been home to my dinner yet.”

“Won’t you have something here before you go?” asked Lois. “It’s so

late.”

“Oh, that’s nothing, I’m used to it,” returned Mr. Harker, with a pale

smile and the passive, self-effacing business manner as he departed,

while Lois went up-stairs once more. The baby cried, and she soothed

him, holding the warm little form close, closer to her—something

tangible before she put him down again to step back into this strange

void where Justin was not.

For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the

existence of a world beyond her ken—a world that had been Justin’s. New

as the visitor’s words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of

herculean struggle; the way this man had looked—his wife had “wondered

that he was still alive.” And Justin—where was he now? _She_ had not

noticed, she had not wondered—until lately.

Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her help, it was the one

thing now that kept her reason firm. She knew that she had not been all

unfaithful; sometimes he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she

was near. She had suffered, too, _she_ had longed for his help and

sympathy. No, she would not think of _that_; she would not! When two are

separated, one must love enough to bridge the gulf—what matter which

one? It seemed now as if there were so much that she might have given,

as if all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might have

been poured out and poured out at his feet—lavished on him, without

regard to need or fitness or expense, as Mary lavished her precious box

of spikenard on One she loved. Now that he was gone, there could be

nothing too hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to

have said to him.

Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him hoarsely to be still;

and then, suddenly conscience-stricken and fearful at the slighting of

this other demand of love,—what awful reprisal might it not exact from

her?—she went to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy

that Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother would

stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the grinding and

destroying wheel of thought had her bound to it once more.

He could not have left her of his own will! If he did not come, it would

be because he was dead—and then he could never know, never, never know.

There would be nothing left to her but the place where he had been. She

looked at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them for

the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and fell on her

knees, and went on them around the room, dragging herself from chair to

sofa, from sofa to bed,—these were the Stations of the Cross that she

was making,—with sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying

with them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the Almighty.

Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought of her; on this

table—here—and here—and here his head had lain. Her tears ceased; she

buried her face in the pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was,

in this world or another. For he was her husband—where he was she must

be, either in body or in spirit.

The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice at the other

end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it seemed; withholding

information from any other. The doctor rang up, in response to an

earlier call, with directions for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been

laid down when the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the

ringing of bells!