"Justin has come home ill; he was taken with a chill as soon as he got
to town; he came in a carriage from the station. I want you to telephone
for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can." Lois spoke
with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up the scattered
toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one who
mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what may
be happening. "And, Dosia!" she arrested the girl as she was
disappearing, "I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what
we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the
children. They're in the nursery now, but I'll send them down; they had
better play outdoors, where he won't hear them."
"Oh, yes, yes; I'll attend to everything," affirmed Dosia hurriedly,
going off for her first duty at the telephone, while Lois disappeared
up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home because he is not well
argues at once the most serious need for it. It is the public crossing
of the danger zone.
With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of
something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of
Justin's illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness
of her eyes, in the fulness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement
of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery
force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke
of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the
common-place surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only
Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken
eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to
make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would
go off together--anything to make him forget, even though the effort
left her breathless afterward. When she went out of the room and came
back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been
with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on
the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the
more quickly to go downtown again if the doctor "fixed him up," though
now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones.
There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which
might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr.
Angevin L. Cater.
"I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and
as I had to come out this way on business, I thought I'd just drop in
and see if there was anything I could do for him in town," he stated to
Dosia.
"I'll find out," said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word
that Justin would like to see the visitor.
Cater himself looked extraordinarily lean and yellow. The fact that his
clothes were new and of a fashionable cut seemed only to make him the
more grotesque. He looked oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile of
greeting seemed to have shrunk also--something had gone out of it.
"Well, Cater, you find me down," said Justin, with glittering, cold
cheerfulness.
"I hope not for long," said the visitor.
"Oh, no; but, when I get up, you won't see me going past much longer.
I'll soon be out of the old place. I guess the game is up, as far as I'm
concerned. Your end is ahead."
"Mr. Alexander," began Cater, clearing his throat and bending earnestly
toward Justin, "I hope you ain't going to hold it up against me that I
had to make a different business deal from what we proposed. I've been
thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasn't any written agreement,
you know."
"No, there was no written agreement," assented Justin; "there was
nothing to bind you."
"That's what I said to myself. If there had been, I'd 'a' stuck to it,
of course. But a man's got to do the best he can for himself in this
world."
"Has he?" asked the sick man, with an enigmatic, questioning smile.
"I'd be mighty sorry to have anything come between us. I reckon I took a
shine to you the first day I met up with you," continued Cater
helplessly. "I'd be mighty sorry to think we weren't friends."
Justin's brilliant eyes surveyed him serenely. Something sadly humorous,
yet noble and imposing, seemed to emanate from his presence, weak and a
failure though he was. "I can be friends with you, but you can't be
friends with me, Cater; it isn't in you to know how," he said.
"Good-by."
"Well, good-by," said the other, rising, his long, angular figure
knocking awkwardly against chairs and tables as he went out, leaving
Justin lying there alone, with his head throbbing horribly. Yet,
strangely enough, in spite of it, his mind felt luminously clear, in
that a certain power seemed to have come to him--a power of correlating
all the events of the past eighteen months and placing them in their
relative sequence. A certain faith--the candid, boyish, unquestioning
faith in the adequacy of his knowledge of those whom he had called his
friends--was gone; the face of Leverich came to him, brutal in its
unveiled cupidity, showing what other men felt but concealed; yet his
own faith in honor and honesty remained, stronger and higher than ever
before. Nothing, he knew, could take it from him; it was a faith that he
had won from the battle with his own soul.
By to-morrow night that note of Lewiston's would be protested, and
then--the burning pain of failure gripped him in its racking clutches
once more, though he strove to fight it off. He would have to get well
quickly, so as to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to
get bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were successful
were sought for, but men of his age who were not had a pretty hard row
to hoe.
Lois was long gone--probably she was with the baby. He missed his
handkerchief, and rose and went over, with a swaying unsteadiness, to
his chiffonier drawer in the farther corner to get one. A pistol lying
there in its leather case, as it had done any time this five years, for
a reserve protection against burglars, caught his eyes. He took it out
of its case, examining the little weapon carefully, with his finger on
the trigger, half cocking it, to see if it needed oil. It was a pretty
little toy. Suddenly, as he held it there, leaning against the
chiffonier, his thin white face with its deep black shadows under the
eyes reflected by the high, narrow glass, the four walls faded away from
him, with their familiar objects; his face gleamed whiter and whiter;
the shadows grew blacker; only his eyes stared----
A room, noticed once a year and a half ago, came before him now with a
creeping, all-possessing distinctness--that loathsome, dreadful room
(long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of
horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his
career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously.
He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp,
mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which
he was drawn--drawn a little nearer and a little nearer, the thing in
his hand--did it move itself? Cold to his touch, it moved----
The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, glided up to him.
She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; her lips refused to speak.
"Why, you needn't have been afraid, dear," he said at once, looking at
her with a gentle surprise. "I'm not a coward, to go and leave you
_that_ way. You need never be afraid of that, Lois."
"No," said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what
made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had
suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justin--what
strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her
there.
She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his wants and
getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, and then knelt down
beside him where he lay, putting her arms around him.
"You oughtn't to be doing this for me; I ought to be taking care of
you," he said, with a tender self-reproach that seemed to come from a
new, hitherto unknown Justin, who watched her face to see if it showed
fatigue, and counted the steps she took for him.
The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and came again later.
The last time he looked grave, ordered complete quiet, and left
sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought on by overwork, had evidently
taken a disregarded hold some time before, and must be reckoned with
now. What Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all
things, freedom from care. Freedom from care!
Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. An impression of
Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room
where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he
dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar
poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it
made one honorable to serve him.
The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when
Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois'
room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At
Dosia's entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she
was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately
in speech as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied
criticism:
"I don't care what you say--I don't care what anybody says. I can't
stand it any longer, when it's _killing_ him! He _can't_ rest unless he
has that money. Am I to just sit down and let my husband die, when he's
in such trouble as this? Is _that_ all I can do? Why, whose trouble is
it? Mine as well as his! If it's his responsibility, it's mine,
too--mine as well as his!"
She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the table, and was
unconscious that it bled. "If there's nobody else to get that money for
him, _I'll_ rise up and get it. He's stood alone long enough--long
enough! He says there is no help left, but he forgets that there's his
wife!"
"Oh, Lois," said Dosia, half weeping. "Oh, Lois, what can _you_ do?
There, you've waked the baby--he's crying."
"Get me the waist to this and my walking-jacket. No, give me the baby
first; he's hungry."
[Illustration: "THE TWO WOMEN SITTING ON THE BENCH, WRAPPED AROUND BY
THE LONELINESS AND THE INTENSE STILLNESS OF THE ONCOMING NIGHT"]
She spoke collectedly, bending over the child as she held him to her,
and straightening the folds of the little garments. "There, there, dear
little heart, dear little heart, mother's comfort--oh, my comfort, my
blessing! Get my things out of the closet now, Dosia, and my gloves from
that drawer, the top one. Oh, and get out baby's cloak and cap, too. I
forgot that I couldn't leave him. I must take him with me." She sank her
voice to a low murmur, so as not to disturb the child.
"Where are you going?" asked Dosia.
"To Eugene Larue."
"Mr. Larue!"
"Yes. He'll let me have the money--he'll understand. He wouldn't let
Justin have it, but he'll give it to me--if I'm not too proud to ask for
it; and I'm not too proud." She spoke in a tone the more thrilling for
its enforced calm. "There are things a man will do for a woman, when he
won't for a man, because then he has to be businesslike; but he doesn't
have to be businesslike to a woman--he can lend to her just because she
needs it."
"Lois!"
"Oh, there's many a woman--like me--who always knows, even though she
never acts on the knowledge, that there is some man she could go to for
help, and get it, just because she was _herself_--a woman and in
trouble--just for that! Dosia, if I go to Eugene Larue myself, in
trouble--_such_ trouble----"
"But he's out at Collingswood!" said Dosia, bewildered.
"Yes, I know. The train leaves here at seven-thirty, it connects at
Haledon. It only takes three quarters of an hour; I've looked it up in
the time-table. I'll be back here again by ten o'clock. I--" She stopped
with a sudden intense motion of listening, then put the child from her
and ran across the hall to the opposite room.
When she came back, pale and collected, it was to say: "Justin's gone to
sleep now. The doctor says he will be under the influence of the
anodynes until morning. Mrs. Bently is in there--I sent for her; she
says she'll stay until I get back." Mrs. Bently was a woman of the
plainer class, half nurse, half friend, capable and kind. "If the
children wake up, they won't be afraid with her; but you'll be here,
anyway."
"Leave the baby with me," implored Dosia.
"No, I can't--suppose I were detained? _Then_ I'd go crazy! He won't be
any bother, he's so little and so light."
"Very well, then; I'll go, too," stated Dosia in desperation. "I am not
needed here. You must have some one with you if you have baby! Let me
go, Lois! You _must_!"
"Oh, very well, if you like," responded Lois indifferently. But that
the suggestion was an unconscious relief to her she showed the next
moment, as she gave some directions to Dosia, who put a few necessaries
and some biscuits in a little hand-bag, and an extra blanket for the
baby in case it should grow chilly.
The train went at seven-thirty. The house must be lighted and the gas
turned down, and the new maid impressed with the fact that they would be
back at a little after nine, though it might really be nearer ten. After
Lois was ready, she went in once more to look at Justin as he slept--his
head thrown forward a little on the pillow, his right hand clasped, and
his knees bent as one supinely running in a dream race with fate. Lois
stooped over and laid her cheek to his hair, to his hand, as one who
sought for the swift, reviving warmth of the spirit.
Then the two women walked down the street toward the station, Lois
absorbed in her own thoughts, and Dosia distracted, confused, half
assenting and half dissenting to the expedition.
"Are you sure Mr. Larue will be there?" she asked anxiously.
"Justin saw him Saturday. He said he was going out there then for the
summer."
So far it would be all right, then. They had passed the Snows' house,
and Dosia looked eagerly for some sign of life there; she hesitated, and
then went on. As they got beyond it, at the corner turning, she looked
back, and saw that Miss Bertha had come out on the piazza.
"I'll catch up with you in a moment," she said to Lois, and ran back
quickly.
"Miss Bertha!"
"Why, Dosia, my dear, I didn't see you; don't speak loud!" Miss Bertha's
face, her whispering lips, her hands, were trembling with excitement.
"We've been under quite a strain, but it's all over now--I'm sure I can
tell _you_. Dear mother has gone up-stairs with a sick-headache! Mr.
Sutton has just proposed to Ada--in the sitting-room. We left them the
parlor, but they preferred the sitting-room. Mother's white shawl is in
there, and I haven't been able to get it."
"Oh!" said Dosia blankly, trying to take in the importance of the fact.
"Is Mr. Girard in? No? Will he be in later?"
"No, not until to-morrow night," said Miss Bertha, as blankly, but Dosia
had already gone on. She did not know whether she were relieved or sorry
that Girard was not there. She did not know what she had meant to say to
him, but it had seemed as if she _must_ see him!
Lois did not ask her why she had stopped; her spirit seemed to be
wrapped in an obscurity as enshrouding as the darkness that was
gathering around them. Only, when they were at last in the train, she
threw back her veil and smiled at Dosia, with a clear, triumphant relief
in the smile, a sweetness, a lightness of expression that was almost
roguish, and that communicated a similar lightness of heart to Dosia.
"He will lend me the money," said Lois, with a grateful confidence that
seemed to shut out every conventional, every worldly suggestion, and to
breathe only of her need and the willingness of a friend to help--not
alone for the need's sake, but for hers.
Dosia tried to picture Eugene Larue as Lois must see him; his bearded
lips, his worn forehead, his quiet, sad, piercing eyes, were not
attractive to her. The whole thing was very bewildering.
It was twenty miles, a forty-minute ride, to Haledon, where they changed
cars for the little branch road that went past Collingswood--a signal
station, as the conductor who punched their tickets impressed on Lois.
Haledon itself was a junction for many lines, with a crowd of people on
the platform continually coming and going under the electric lights. As
Lois and Dosia waited for their train, an automobile dashed up, and a
man and a woman, getting out of it with wraps and bundles, took their
place among those who were waiting for the west-bound express. The
woman, large and elegantly gowned, had something familiar in her outline
as she turned to her companion, a short, ferret-faced man with a fair
mustache--the man who lately had been seen everywhere with Mrs.
Leverich. Yes, it was Mrs. Leverich. Dosia shrank back into the shadow.
The light struck full athwart the large, full-blown face of Myra as she
turned to the man caressingly with some remark; his eyes, evilly
cognizant, smiled back again as he answered, with his cigar between his
teeth.
Dosia felt that old sensation of burning shame--she had seen something
that should have been hidden in darkness. They were going off together!
All those whispers about Mrs. Leverich had been true.
There were only a few people in the shaky, rattly little car when Lois
and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road
with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on
the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor
of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in
his long cloak, had slept all the way. It was but seven miles to
Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the
journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station
with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the
ticket-office and going off as they reached it. Dosia ran after him.
"Mr. Larue's place is near here, isn't it?" she called.
"Yes, over there to the right," said the youth, pointing down the board
walk, which seemed to end at nowhere, "about a quarter of a mile down.
You'll know when you come to the gates. They're big iron ones."
"Isn't there any way of riding?"
"I guess not," said the youth, and disappeared into the woods on a
bicycle.
"Oh, it will be only a step," said Lois, starting off down the walk,
followed perforce by Dosia, with the hand-bag, both walking in silence.
The excursion, from an easily imagined, matter-of-fact daylight
possibility, had been growing gradually a thing of the dark, unknown,
fantastic. A faint remnant of the fading light remained in the west,
vanishing as they looked at it. High above the treetops a pale moon hung
high; there seemed nothing to connect them with civilization but that
iron track curved out of sight.
The quarter of a mile prolonged itself indefinitely, with that strangely
eternal effect of the unknown; yet the big iron gates were reached at
last, showing a long winding drive within. It was here that Eugene Larue
had built a house for his bride, living in it these summers when she was
away, alone among his kind, a man who must confess tacitly before the
world that he was unable to make his wife care for him--a darkened,
desolate, lonely life, as dark and as desolate as this house seemed now.
An undefined dread possessed Dosia, though Lois spoke confidently:
"The walk has not really been very long. We'll probably drive back. It's
odd that there are no lights, but perhaps he is sitting outside. Ah,
there's a light!"
Yet, as she spoke, the light left the window and hung on the cornice
above--it was the moon, and not a lamp, that had made it. They ascended
the piazza steps; there was no one there.
"There is a knocker at the front door," said Lois. She pounded, and the
house vibrated terrifyingly through the stillness. At the same instant a
scraping on the gravel walk behind them made them turn. It was the boy
on the bicycle, who had sped back to them.
"Mr. Larue ain't there," he called. "The woman who closed up the house
told me he had a cable from his wife, and he sailed for Europe this
afternoon. She says, do you want the key?"
"No," said Lois, and the messenger once more disappeared.
[Illustration: "'THEY'LL GET FULL OF EARTH AGAIN,' SHE PROTESTED"]
This, then, was the end of her exaltation--for this she had passionately
nerved herself! There was to be neither the warmth of instant
comprehension of her errand nor the frank giving of aid when necessity
had been pleaded; there was nothing. She shifted the baby over to the
other shoulder, and they retraced their way, which now seemed familiar
and short. There was, at any rate, a light on a tall pole in front of
the little station, although the station itself was deserted; they
seated themselves on the bench under it to wait. The train was not
scheduled for nearly an hour yet.
"Oh, if I could only fly back!" Lois groaned. "I don't see how I can
wait--I don't see how I can wait! Oh, why did I come?"
"Perhaps there is a train before the one you spoke of," said Dosia, with
the terribly self-accusing feeling now that she ought to have prevented
the expedition at the beginning. She got up to go into the little box of
a house, in search of a time-table. As she passed the tall post that
held the light, she saw tacked on it a paper; and read aloud the words
written on it below the date: