an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge
held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily
along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the
post-office. He seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw
back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them
white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought,
with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself,
and came forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright courtesy, a
punctilious warmth of manner. He walked along with her a few paces as he
talked, lifting Zaidee over a flooded crossing, before going once more
on his way. He was nothing to her, the stranger who had killed her
ideal; yet all day it was as if his image were photographed in the
colors of life upon the retina of her eye. She could not push it away,
try as she might.
Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through
the letters written by Lois. He had been reported as going on in his old
way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing
more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except
Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her new position of
sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an
outsider any more; she _belonged_.
As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with
something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be
loved now felt--after a year of trial and conflict with death--that she
only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even
though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and
tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious,
fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal
depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but
when Dosia "said her prayers," she got, child-fashion, very near to a
Some One who brought her an intimate tender comfort of resurrection and
of life.
"I don't think Justin seems well," she repeated, Lois, looking up at her
with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice
of the remark. "He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I
came."
"He has something on his mind," assented Lois, with a note of languor in
her voice. "I suppose it's the business. I made up my mind to ask him
about it to-night. He has been out every evening lately, and I hardly
see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don't get
down to breakfast."
"Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning," cried Dosia, with
compunction at having so far forgotten it. "He said that Mr. Larue had
come in to inquire about you yesterday. He is going to send you a basket
of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow."
"Eugene Larue!" Lois' lips relaxed into a pleased curve; a slight color
touched her cheek. "That was very nice of him. He knew I'd like to look
forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!"
"I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day; he asked after you," continued
Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that
tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes.
"Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows'. Billy's out West."
"So I've heard," said Dosia.
It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of
all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her
pathway now, after that desire was gone!
"You'd better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired. It's time for
you to take a little rest. I'll see to the children. I hope baby will
stay asleep. Let me pull this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the
shades?"
"No, I'd rather have the light. Please hand me that book over there on
the stand," said Lois, holding out her hand for the big, old-fashioned
brown volume that Dosia brought to her.
"You oughtn't to read; you ought to go to sleep," said Dosia, with
tender severity.
"I'm not going to read," returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over
the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the
sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with
him--alone with him, to think.
The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the title-page
proclaimed, "A Woman's Kingdom," and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A
neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her
convalescence. In all the time she had had it, she had never read any
further than that title-page.
There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another
son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a
woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again,
spiritually as well as physically. In those long, restful hours
afterward, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a
freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed
tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger
bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision; and a
peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown
before.
Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward
either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little
boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible
corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her--for a
little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of
those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again;
even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on
one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet
to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband's gaze when
he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk
about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was
as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child.
One evening he came in to sit by her,--her convalescence had been a long
and dragging one,--and she had paused in the midst of telling him
something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised
herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had
fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly
exhausted! Everything proclaimed it--his attitude, grimly grotesque in
the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he
had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head
resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply
upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in
those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the
transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly
lifeless. He slept without moving,--almost, it seemed, without
breathing,--while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened,
dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed
change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she
stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed
to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an
icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never,
never----
Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, "Did you
speak?"
"Oh, you frightened me so! Don't go to sleep like that again," said
Lois, with a shaking voice. "Come here."
He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers
with a rush of painful emotion. "Why, you mustn't get worked up over a
little thing like that," he objected lightly, going out of the room
afterward with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him with
strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought of
him without any thought of benefit to herself.
The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her
attention oddly--"The Woman's Kingdom." Another phrase correlated with
it in her memory--"Queen of the Home." That was supposed to be woman's
domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper,
sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. The woman's kingdom,
queen of the home. Gradually the words led her down long lanes of
retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby's fingers; _they_
kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She, poor,
bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a
queen! Home and the heart of her husband--there lay her woman's kingdom,
her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none
other: she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as
her rule made it; she must be judged by her government--as she was queen
enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words.
Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,--set
in motion by those magic words,--when she lay at rest in the afternoons,
with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside
her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never
perceive from imagination, but only from experience--who cannot even
adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not
personally experienced. No advice touches them, for the words that
embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past
seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same
circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom
look back--the present, that is always climbing on into the future,
occupies them exclusively.
Lois with "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand, felt that some source of
power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her
grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish
thoughts came with the words--historic names of women whom men had loved
devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they
themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There
were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other
generations; queens indeed! She couldn't really interest _one_ man! She
thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those
who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the
street had no other object in life than purveying to the household
comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from
him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple
farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage,
nothing more; they were bored to death by each other's society. Another
couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both
sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be
satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were
an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very
much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one
husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young.
Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man
admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired
her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture,
betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it
accomplished?
How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue--she
could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of
conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations
were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her
woman's kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if
he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to
know--get his guidance-- But Lois was before all things inviolably a
wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and
Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief
moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterward,
conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene
Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that
way. She took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she
and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had
known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test. The man who
was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband.
Justin!
With "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek
of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some new
knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now
really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well--that
was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was _not_ looking well! But she would
make him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of
hers; she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be
able to think of nothing, of no one, but her--he had not always thought
of her. _She would not pity herself._ She would learn to laugh, even if
it took heroic effort; men liked you to laugh. She had always taken
everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, _dead_ face of a
month ago frightened her for a moment, painfully; but he had seemed
better since, though, as Dosia said, he didn't look well. Oh, when he
came home to-night----!
She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown
with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more
brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply
blue. The children exclaimed over their "pretty mama." She looked
younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. She could not
help saying:
"How lovely you are, Lois! And you're all dressed up, too; do you expect
any one?"
"Only Justin," said Lois.
"Only Justin"! The words brought an exquisite joy with them--only
Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour
now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was
often late-- Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The
two women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterward,
an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop. Lois, divested of her
rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and
soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help
unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an
interval of quiet she went up-stairs, to find Lois at last lying down.
"It's eleven o'clock, Lois; I think I'll go to bed. Shall I leave the
gas burning down-stairs?"
"Yes, please do; he can't get anything now but the last train out."
"And you don't want me to stay here with you?"
"No--oh, no."
As once before, Lois waited for that train--yet how differently! If that
injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word,
she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed
itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity
herself--she would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that
way.
The night was clear and warm, the stars were shining, as she got up and
sat by the window, looking out from behind the curtain, her beautiful
braided hair over one shoulder. The last train came in; the people from
it, in twos and threes, straggled down the street, but not Justin. He
must have missed that last train out. Of course he must have missed it!
We are apt to fancy causeless disaster to those we love; the amount of
"worry" more or less willingly indulged in by uncontrolled minds seems
at times enough to swamp the understanding: yet there is a foreboding,
unsought, unwelcomed, combated, which, once felt, can never be
counterfeited; it carries with it some chill, unfathomed quality of
truth.
Lois knew now that she had had this foreboding all day.
XXI
"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
bothered; 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 did that
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 _every_
one 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 by a sort 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
now 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
any one 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, 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
mama never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made
merry for them, and saw to her household, which was dependent on the
services 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, 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."
"I was so little when we drifted off. I didn't know how to help, how to
save 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.