Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome

THE WAYFARERS

BY

MARY STEWART CUTTING

AUTHOR OF LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP,

LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE, ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

NEW YORK

THE McCLURE COMPANY

MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company

Published, June, 1908

Copyright, 1907, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Company

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WAYFARERS

CHAPTER ONE

There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat crowded with human beings at a quarter of six o’clock in the evening, when the great homeward rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. At that time, although there are some returning shoppers and women type-writers and clerks, the larger number of the passengers are men, sitting in slanting rows to catch the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an upright mass at the forward end of the boat. It is noticeable that, with a few exceptions, those who have gone forth in the morning distinct individuals, well dressed, freshly shaven, with clean linen, an animated manner, a brisk step, and an eager-eyed disposition toward the labors of the day, seem, as they return at night, to be only component parts of a shabby crowd in indistinguishable apparel, and worn to a uniform dullness not only of appearance but of attitude and expression. The hard day’s work is over, but the rest is not yet attained. We all know that between the darkness and the dawn comes the period when vitality is at its lowest ebb, and in all transition periods there is a subtle withdrawing of the old force before the new fills its place. In that temporary collapse in the daily adjustment between two lives, the business and the domestic, many a man with overwrought brain and tired body feels that what he has been looking forward to as a happy rest appears to him now momentarily as an unavoidable and wearying need for further effort. The demand upon him varies in kind, but it is still there.

Men in a mass are neither beautiful nor impressive to look at in the modern black or sad-colored raiment of every-day custom, and it is difficult, as the eyes rest on the faces in these commonplace rows, to realize the space which love inevitably fills in these lives, so far apart from romance do they seem, forgetful as we are of the worn truth that romance is a flowering weed which grows in any soil. For three fourths of these men some woman waits. Those dull eyes can gleam, those set lips can kiss; these be heroes, handsome men, arbiters of destiny! There is positive grotesqueness in the idea, seen in this obliterating haze of fatigue that so maliciously dwarfs and slurs. That man over there with the long upper lip and closed lids has an episode in his middle-aged existence to match any in the annals of fiction. That other beside him, short, fat, with kind eyes and a stubby brown beard, is the sum of all that is good and beautiful to the wife for whom his homecoming continues to be the poignant event of the day. This man with the long, thin face is a modern martyr working himself to death for his family; this one was in the newspapers last week in a connection best not remembered. This one—you would pick him out at once from among the rest—is to be married to-morrow. This man, and this, and this, while presently unconscious of the great law, are still living under it. Not only to youth is the promise given; it becomes a larger and more vital thing as the opportunities of life increase, further spreading in its fostering of good or evil—a thread so deeply interwoven on the under side of the fabric that we forget to look for it.

In every case is a character to be made or marred, not only by the large molding, but by the infinitesimal touches of that love whose influence we conventionally limit to young and unmarried persons—while knowing, whether we acknowledge it or not, that it is the one eternally powerful element in life.

Even in a far-off reflex action, this is shown on the ferry-boat in the fact that when one of this blended concourse of men meets a woman he instantly regains an individuality; he pulls himself together, his eyes become bright, his manner concentrated, his clothes set well on him. He is no longer one of the crowd, but himself.

Tireless youth may achieve the same individual effect, or unusual personal beauty, or great happiness, or the possession of a dominant idea. A number of people, as they came forward on the boat, turned to look back at two men sitting by the narrow passageway, who in the midst of the general indifference were talking in a low tone, with obviously intense earnestness. Those who looked once usually turned a second time to gaze on the face of one.

Many a man who has an upright nature and a good disposition fails to show these facts patently to the casual observer. To Justin Alexander had been given the grace of a singularly attractive countenance. He was of a fair complexion, with light hair, a good nose slightly aquiline, and a well-shaped mouth and chin; but his charm was irrespective of feature. No one could look at him and not know him to be a man of sweet and fine honor. The gaze of his keen blue eyes—clear, though not very large—carried conviction to whomsoever it rested on that a clean and honest soul dwelt therein. Although he did not in the least realize it, this had been one of the greatest factors in any success that he had ever had, joined as it was to good judgment and great physical energy. Everyone liked him, not for what he said or did, but for what he was, and for the encouragement of his bright glance, which had a convincing and magnetic quality in it. He talked intelligently and well, although not a great deal, and among the many people who were drawn toward him a corresponding liking on his part was easily inferred. Yet he was, in fact, innately although dumbly critical; a reticent man as to his own thoughts and opinions, he took an inward measurement of persons and circumstances often the very reverse of what was supposed. This attitude of his was in no sense of the word hypocritical, it came instead from a constitutional dislike of voicing his innermost feelings. It somehow hurt him to acknowledge defects in others, and he had also an impersonal sense of justice which allowed for good qualities in those who were uncongenial to him; he did not really like the man who sat beside him, and with whom he had the prospect of being intimately associated, but even his wife had hardly divined this; certainly Joseph Leverich himself, large, jovial, and shrewd-eyed, would have been the last to suspect it.

“The gist of the matter is this, Alexander,” he was saying, as he hit one hand heavily with the large forefinger of the other, “we want a man capable not only of overseeing the works,—Harker understands that pretty well,—but of managing the real business of the factory and representing it with business men; neither Foster nor I can attend to it—Great Scott, I wish we could! We haven’t the time. We bought the whole outfit a couple of years ago; it’s only one of twenty other irons we have in the fire.”

“I know that your interests are large,” said Alexander, as Leverich paused.

“The great drawback to having large interests is that you have to delegate so much of the management to others. When we took up this, it ran itself, after a fashion; but since that a dozen other people are making the same thing—of course, with slight variations, but practically the same thing. Patents don’t really protect you much. Now we want our machine pushed; but neither Foster nor I, for different reasons, can do this. The fact is, we don’t want to appear at all. And we’ve had our eye on you for some time.”

“This is news to me,” said Alexander.

“Now the control of the factory has to be settled suddenly, out of hand; somebody has got to take hold. So we make you the offer. We will deposit fifty thousand to your credit, to be used as working capital—you can’t branch out with less; you’ve got to be able to work to advantage. The days have gone when a business could be set going on a couple of thousand and worked up with industry and frugality, as the copy-books say, into the millions. Small concerns nowadays go to the wall—and serve ’em right, I say; only fools believe in success without money. We’ll see to your backing! Of course, the interest will be paid out of the business, you don’t undertake it individually. At the end of two years more we ought to have a big thing.”

“And if we don’t?” said Alexander.

The other’s dim gooseberry eyes suddenly flashed. “If you think we will not, you are not the man we want—he’s got to have the courage of his convictions to be worth his salt. But you can’t put me off this way—I know you. Take up the project or leave it—I say this, but in reality you can’t leave it, and you know it. A man doesn’t get a chance like this twice. Hamilton came to us the other day for the position, and we refused him, although he had capital and we wouldn’t have had to advance a cent of the money we’re willing to put up for you.”

“But why are you willing to?” Justin looked with his bright eyes at the other.

“Because you are the man we want!” Leverich leaned forward eagerly, and shifted his large frame so as to put each muscle into an easier position. “Don’t let’s go over that old ground again. You’ve had just the experience in the old company that we need; but it’s your wide acquaintance that tells, and it’s that that we’re willing to buy. We believe you can make a market for our goods.”

“It is an important step,” said the other thoughtfully, “to leave a certainty for an uncertainty—not that I should regard it as an uncertainty if I took it,” he added, with a smile.

“I know it’s hard to break away and start out for yourself when you have a family; lots of men go all their lives in a rut because they haven’t the courage to take the plunge. But you don’t want to work for somebody else all your life; you don’t want to feel that you’re wasting all your best years. By and by it will be too late. And a growing family takes more money each year, instead of less—you’ve got to think of that, too. It’s a terrible thing to be always cramped, and know there’s no way out of it in this world.”

“You don’t need to tell me all this, Leverich,” said Justin coolly.

“No, I know I don’t; but I want you to realize that you have your chance now—one in a million. I’m sorry to hurry you, but you see the way we’re fixed. Say the word now! Get it off your mind and you’ll sleep easier. I know what your word is—as good as your bond. I’d take it! You can give any formal decision later.”

Justin still smiled, but he shook his head; though capable of quick decision when necessary, it was yet impossible to hurry him; his actions in every case depended on his own thought, and gained no volition from outside influences, which might indeed retard but could never compel. Virtually he had concluded to accept Leverich’s offer, but he would take his own time about saying so; he felt the haste of the other man to be somewhat of an offense against decency.

“Well!” Leverich shrugged his heavy shoulders at the bright impenetrableness that was like a shining armor. “We said we’d give you until Wednesday, so of course we will. We will bring the books around to-night anyway, and go over them, as we planned; you can’t afford to lose any time. And talk to your wife about it, she’s a sensible woman—and one who longs, like all the rest of ’em, for more than she’s got,” he added to himself, with cynical satisfaction.

“Martin is watching us now,” he continued, waving his hand over toward the other side of the boat, where a slight, insignificant-looking man with small features and a large, bulging forehead lifted his hand in an answering gesture. “You’d never think, to look at him, that he was what he is; he has more brains in his little finger than I have in my whole head.” Leverich spoke with evident sincerity. “I’m just a plain man of business, but Foster’s a genius. He fixed on you from the start. Hello, we’re ’most in already.”

The crowd from the rear cabin had begun to push through the passageway and surge to the front of the boat, which was still some distance from the dock. The man next them folded up his paper, and Justin and Leverich rose mechanically and stood amid the throng, which became more and more compact every moment.

Suddenly both men started as they looked back at the fresh accessions to the crowd, and pushed sideways, falling behind a little to get in line with a tall and slender young woman with pink roses in a black hat, and a dotted veil that emphasized her rich coloring. She raised her head as a voice beside her said:

“Good evening, Mrs. Alexander!”

“Oh, is that you, Mr. Leverich? How do you do? I haven’t met a soul I knew on the boat until this moment, and now I see six people. Oh, Justin!” She had faced around as a hand was laid on her arm, and stood looking up at him with happily surprised eyes, while he smiled back at her with a slight flush on his own cheek. “I was looking for you all the time,” she said.

The sudden and unexpected meeting of husband and wife has a singular element in it—it is somewhat like unconsciously approaching a mirror in which one views a stranger who turns out to be one’s self. That swift and impersonal view gives an impression as a whole that can be reached in no other way. Lois Alexander noticed at once that her husband’s clothes needed brushing, and that the velvet collar of his overcoat was worn at the edges—she had hardly seen the coat this year except as he was putting it on or taking it off. It gave her a slight shock to see that the tired lines around his eyes made his face look older than she was accustomed to think of it. He, for his part, experienced the same slight shock in looking at her; he saw the little imperfections in her face, and the roses in her hat appeared to him perhaps too pink and girlish. Yet through all this there was an indescribable thrill of happy possession and loving admiration of each other, touchingly sweet, and all the tenderer for the hint of passing years. Among all the men around, Justin was the king; among all women, she was the most desirable.

After the expected sensations of the usual home greeting and the accustomed kiss, it gave a spice to intimacy to meet perforce as strangers. She leaned partly against him as she talked to Mr. Leverich, and he pressed her arm with his strong fingers under cover of her cloak and made the color come and go in her cheek; her eyes mutely implored him to stop, and he enjoyed her confusion. Husband and wife looked well together, in a certain vitality of movement and expression common to both which made others instinctively turn to observe them.

“I have been trying to discover my husband all the way across,” she complained to Leverich. “I was sure that he was on this boat. Why didn’t you look out for me, Justin?”

“You didn’t say you were going in town to-day,” he expostulated.

“How often have I told you to look out for me? I am likely to go in at any time. I had to get some things for the children. Have you—have you seen anyone to-day?” She spoke disconnectedly, as conscious as a girl of the disconcerting pressure on her arm.

“No—oh, yes; I saw Eugene Larue this morning, he’s back from the other side.”

“Did he say when he would be out?”

“No.”

“Did you ask him?”

“No. The fact is, Lois, I only saw him for a moment and I never thought about it.”

“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference. I wanted to speak to you about Theodosia; I’ve had a letter, and she’s coming. We are going to have a young lady as a visitor this winter,” she added formally in explanation to Mr. Leverich, who still stood at her elbow. “She’s coming up North to study music; she’s very pretty, I believe, and clever.”

“A relation?” hazarded Mr. Leverich.

“Yes; she’s a young cousin of mine—I haven’t seen her since she was a child. It will be so pleasant to have a girl in the house.”

“You like company,” he returned approvingly, “my wife does, too; we always have a houseful. She says I show off better when we have visitors—can’t let my angry passions rise. By the way, Alexander, what time shall I bring the books over to-night?”

Lois Alexander’s startled, questioning glance sought her husband’s, and his gave a gravely confidential assent before he answered:

“Any time you say.”

“Will eight o’clock be too early?”

“No, that will suit me very well.”

“Well, good-by!” He took off his hat in farewell to Lois, and disappeared in the crowd, as his broad shoulders forced a sinuous passage through the throng.

“How are the children?” Justin asked his wife.

“They’re all right.” She paused, and then said: “If you are to look over those books, I suppose we can’t go to the Calenders’ to-night.”

“No.” The dark line of the pier struck athwart the dusky light and divided the windows in two. “At least, I cannot, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go.”

“You know that I will not go without you.”

“Other women do.”

“Well, I will not.”

“What a foolish girl!” His tone was fond. “Then—take care!” The boat had bumped into the dock; in the struggling press of the stampeding crowd, Lois clung to her husband’s arm and he strove to ward off the crush from her. When they were at last over the gang-plank, joining in the hurrying, straggling procession toward the train, he looked at her with tender solicitude.

“You shouldn’t come out on the boat so late as this. Was it too much for you?”

“Oh, no, no! I do this alone lots of times.” She felt so vividly happy that her breathlessness was hardly an annoyance as they dodged in front of the incoming drays of another boat and waved aside the impeding newsboys crying the evening papers.

She foresaw that they would be separated in the train, and found voice enough to whisper to him:

“Are you to decide to-night?”

“I have virtually decided now.”

“To accept?”

“Yes.”

Her breath came suddenly; with the monosyllable an electric wave had set the pulses of both tingling. The spoken word had not failed of its wonted power; it had at this moment opened a gate hitherto closed. Both husband and wife felt their feet at last set on the great highroad of modern romance, the road to wealth, along which ride daily, as of old, knights in armor, duly caparisoned, with shield and spear, bent, not on deeds of chivalry, but on one glittering quest—a grim pathway, veiled by a golden haze.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a mighty hour. Justin, sitting by the open window with his head upon his hand, looking out into the night, saw but dimly the pale shining of the familiar stars, in the search for the rising star of his own future. It was far on in the small hours, and he had not yet slept, although he had come up-stairs at twelve o’clock with the firm intention of undressing and going to bed at once. He had, instead, dropped down into the wicker chair in the unlighted sitting-room to think for a few moments—and a few moments—and a few moments more.

The dining-table which he had left was filled with sheets of paper covered with fine figures, and his mind at first continually reverted to them, multiplying, subtracting, and correcting with keen facility, and with infinitesimal changes in the final result, which he knew, notwithstanding, could be only approximate, no matter how painstakingly his fancy strove to render it exact.

After a while, however, other thoughts asserted themselves. The vast influences of the night were around him as from the deep places of the universe—the depth of dusky gloom, the depth of silence. The window looked out over a garden, but in this dusky gloom it had lost the semblance of earth and seemed, instead, but the under part of an enveloping cloud in which he was the only breathing human life. The vague dark branches of the trees waving across the lesser darkness spoke of even deeper mystery in their mute witness to that breath from the unseen which moved them.

It was not the problem of the universe of which all this spoke to Justin Alexander, though as such it had been part and parcel of his questioning youth. The days when he might have sung with Omar were gone with those speculative midnight hours, the foregathering with death, the conscious search for higher meanings, the effort to solve the unknowable; whatever philosophy was evolved from those journeys into the dark was labeled and put away on a remote shelf, where the mind occasionally reverted to it with a sigh of thoughtful possession, but for which there was no longer any daily use. There was even a chance that on bringing the precious package out into the modern daylight it might be found to have changed its color entirely.

The problem of his own life was what this hour held in its shifting hold for Justin, the wavering veiled outlines on which he gazed seemed to prefigure the uncertain boundaries of his own future. To a man who has a family, the leaving of a certain occupation for an uncertain one, even though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space.

The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of it.

In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest sympathy. His wife—she was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one who lived in an alien sphere. His children—he loved them fondly, but the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his rôle of provider—neither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the rest of freedom.

Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, careless day!

The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His roaming fancy——

“Are you up still?”

Justin started—it was the voice of his wife. He came back to the familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; they became already as though they had never been as he answered:

“Yes; I couldn’t have slept if I had gone to bed.”

“But you’re all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing in on you!”

Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around his neck.

“Shut the window at once! You’re so imprudent. You must remember that it isn’t summer now.”

She lent herself to his embrace for a moment.

“Do you know how late it is?”

“No, and I don’t want to. Let’s sit here together for a little while, I’m unspeakably wide awake! I’ll make up a little fire for a few minutes and we’ll have a midnight talk.”

She laughed with evident pleasure. “Well!”

He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth, lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he leaned forward—the light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and wavered and fell around her.

It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern illustration of youthful motherhood.

She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly colored—her lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now, unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you.

She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward watching the blaze in a new absorption.

“I know you’re thinking of the new venture.”

“Yes; it’s a good deal to think of.”

“I should say so!” She caught her breath admiringly. “I listened to you and those men talking to-night until I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy!”

“They won’t drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish,” said Justin emphatically.

“But I thought it was all settled that you could!”

“Oh, yes—on paper. Everything looks all right there—and it shall be, too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow for differences. I know the machine is good—I don’t take any chances on that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market all the time to compete with; we haven’t a monopoly.”

“Well, you can make your prices lower than the others,” she suggested brightly.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he explained with patience, “but if we put prices too low there’s no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though; we’ve got to be seen doing business, even if it’s at a loss. That’s what the fifty thousand’s for—to tide us over just such a time.”

“It is a great deal to have to pay back,” she said anxiously, leaning forward to throw a small log on the fire. “I don’t like you to saddle yourself with such a debt. I don’t like it!”

What weighed on him most—the personal care and responsibility—made no impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a woman’s horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace.

“I wish you could get along without the money.”

“I’m glad enough to have it,” he replied. “Rest assured, Lois, if they didn’t think me worth it they wouldn’t lend it to me—they expect big interest on their investment.”

“And is our living to come out of it, too?”

“Oh, yes—until there’s an income.”

“How much will you take?”

“Oh, no fixed sum—just as little as we can get along with at present. We’ll go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our feet.”

“Indeed, I’ll economize!” She clasped her hands earnestly. “There are only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we can’t do without. After that we’ll need next to nothing. This rug, for instance—it’s in rags, I’m ashamed to bring anyone up here—but that won’t cost much, and we’ve got to get one for the front hall; it isn’t decent. And I’ll have to buy the children’s winter clothing before it gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last year’s coat looks like a ruffle.”

“Oh, of course, get what is needed,” said the father resignedly. “Some money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you can.”

She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back her lost ground.

“Ah, don’t let’s leave the fire yet,” she pleaded, as he made a motion to rise. “I want to sit here a few minutes more, and it’s going to blaze up so beautifully! It’s so seldom that we ever really get a chance to talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this way. I’ve hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill—a man with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children and for me you would have left the place long ago.”

“If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it now,” he answered gently.

“Yes, I know. It’s been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately, I’ve seen how worried you were. Dear, I don’t want to be a drag; I want to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can.”

“You always help me.”

“Ah, no, I don’t; I feel it, though you may not.” She paused, and went on again with a tremulous note in her voice: “Justin, I miss you so much sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadn’t seen you at all!”

“You see all there is of me,” said Justin tersely. “How many times a year do I go out of an evening without you?”

“Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I don’t get any chance at all. You never ask me anything, or notice when I don’t feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill and I not know it?”

“No, I suppose not,” said Justin. “But I’m afraid you’ll have another headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois.”

“No, I will not!” She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely.

She tried to speak evenly as she said: “I didn’t mean that to sound as if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make things—different.”

She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his gaze.

It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To live one’s own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the large known phenomena of nature.

Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century—life must be nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one’s inner limit of youth lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of themselves as young married people with a future all to come.

The tender proprietorship of Justin’s caress was more comforting to Lois than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind preoccupied with divergent claims.

The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys—a doll’s cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor were picture-books and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to speak of the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar upon his hearthstone.

They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame

Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her estimate of him—the honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of those he liked, the love of her—all were there; but she was beginning gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that shining outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and preference and habit of which she knew nothing—only as time went on did she begin to perceive the extent of it.

Those disappointing moments when they were not in accord—whole days sometimes dropped out of the week—left a void which no caresses filled. It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed. Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship of wedlock, are a thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything was more or less upsetting,—marriage, babies, sickness, housekeeping,—years when domestic situations changed their shape daily, an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him, after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end; when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a contradiction to everything that she had ever been before.

The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night, was lacking.

When she spoke again it was to say: “When do you take the new place?”

“Next month.”

“I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will you go in on a later train in the mornings, dear?”

“I’ll take an earlier one.”

“But then you’ll come out sooner in the afternoon?”

“I’ll come out much later.”

“Oh, oh!” she sighed, with the prevision of long hours of loneliness for herself.

“At least, you can take more than that miserable two weeks’ holiday in the summer.”

“My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. You don’t understand; I’ve got to work.”

There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and the room had sunk into partial obscurity. She was the first to speak, as before, conquering anew the tremulousness in her voice:

“Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next month?”

“Yes. How long is she to stay?”

“For all winter. She’s to study music, you remember?”

“For all winter!” He sat up straight with the emphasis of his words. “Why, where will you put her?”

“Oh, I’ll manage that. But I do wish we had a larger house; this is maddening sometimes.”

“Perhaps we’ll be able to build some day.”

“Oh, if we could really have our own house!”

She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that future which is the summit of good to suburban dwellers, when the contracted space of a rented house can be changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout.

“I know exactly how I should furnish it; I saw the loveliest things to-day in town.”

Already the thought of brass and mahogany and Oriental rugs, rich in texture and delicious in coloring, filled her mind.

To Lois, an intelligent and practical woman, the possession of money meant the opportunity to buy; the possession of yet more money would mean more opportunity to buy. To Justin, on the other hand, it meant the ability to pay; the comfort of being able to accede, with ease and promptness, to the demands upon him. Like most American husbands in his station, the sum spent upon house and family far exceeded in ratio his own personal expenses. There were a few luxuries which he casually looked forward to enjoying, but beyond this money represented to him pre-eminently further business possibilities, the power to play competently in the great game, with the result of a sufficient provision for his wife and children in case of his death. His heart leaped now at the thought of taking a front rank among the players. If in this next year——

“Do you think I had better buy the new rug when I go to town Friday, or wait until next month?” asked Lois suddenly.

“You had better wait,” said Justin, with decision. He rose, and added: “You must go to bed, Lois.”

She rose also, in obedience, and he kissed her officially.

“Good night.”

“You are not going to sit up later!”

“Just a minute. I want to light the candle and look for something in this paper I forgot to notice earlier.”

He loved his wife, but felt, without owning it, that he must stay for a brief space beyond the sound of her voice.

“Now, don’t wait another moment, or you’ll get cold.” He spoke authoritatively. “The fire’s almost out.”

He had already turned from her, and was sitting down by the dim flicker of the newly lighted candle, absorbed once more in figures, with the newspaper before him. The midnight hour had failed of its inspiration; both experienced the spiritual dearth and fatigue which follows time-worn and trivial conversation.

Lois’ pensive eyes were full of a wistful question as she left the room; but after a slight interval she returned with a gliding step and softly placed a fresh log upon the dull red embers of the dying fire, and fanned them noiselessly until a flame leaped out again, holding her white draperies to one side the while, with one long curl falling across her bosom. As her husband looked up, her beautiful self-forgetting smile shone out and became a part of the light around him before she vanished once more through the doorway.

CHAPTER THREE

Theodosia Linden sat in the high-backed, plush-covered seat of the sleeping-car, with her hands folded in her lap, looking out of the window at the flat landscape as it sped past her. The long green rows of cotton-plants were interspersed with tracts of scrub-oak and pine, dotted here and there with gray cabins, around which negroes, little and big, in scanty garments were grouped to watch the train go by; occasionally it whizzed past a small station, a mere shed set on a wooden platform reached by a flight of steps, and graced by no name for the aid of the traveler, except the cabalistic legend, “Southern Express Company,” on a swinging board at one end. It was before these ultimate days when factories are springing up all over the new South, and she had not yet reached the scattered few that upraised their staring yellow frames by the side of the muddy streams; only the cotton-fields and the scrub-oaks ran along by the train, with the view of the blue mountains here and there, and a blue sky above all. Dosia thought that she had never seen anything so beautiful or inspiring; it was the world outside of her home.

There is no discontent so deep, so wearying, so soul-embracing, as that of the girl who is supposed to be contented with the little rounds of household life. Dosia’s mother had died when she was a small child, but so much love and care had been given her by relatives and by her father, a professor in a small college and a gentle and good man, that she had never felt the loss. When she was twelve years old her father married again, and, on account of his failing health, they moved from their home in the West to the far South, where Mr. Linden hoped, with the small income which he already possessed, to engage in some industry suitable to his limited powers; but in the enervating climate he gradually lost all ambition and business habits. He became yellow in complexion and slouching as to appearance and walk; but he was even more gentle than before, and gave the benefit of much good advice to the loungers around the village store or the new people from the North who came to learn the methods pertaining to cotton-raising, for he always knew how everything should be done.

He was a kind, affectionate husband and father, always placid and amiable, and only regretting, as he continually affirmed, that he could not provide for the family as he should. The children, of whom there were four by this second marriage, adored their father, as did his wife, who was a pretty woman, and as gentle, as incompetent, and almost as self-regretful as himself. The little stepmother had from the first attached herself to Dosia, whom she treated even at that early stage of life less as a child than as a friend, to be depended on in all emergencies.

Dosia could not have told at just exactly what period in her existence the unthinking content of childhood had left her. It was natural to live in the small, poorly built house, surrounded by an unkempt yard with broken fences, with small children to dress and care for and a baby to be tended, and a dinner-table that was set at sixes and sevens, with a continual desultory striving after a refinement of dress and living that was never accomplished. It was a matter of course to be always “clearing up,” yet never in order, and to be always economizing temporarily in view of the stated remittance which never could be used for paying anything but back debts when it did come. Dosia was a sweet-natured child, affectionate and helpful, with a healthy constitution which made work unnoticeable, and she had taken life happily in the old-fashioned way according to the views of her elders, without criticism or comment. Her education, although desultory, had been fairly good, depending partly on teachers who came from the North and stayed in Balderville for their health, and partly on her father, who was a man of taste as well as culture, and who read with her in the evenings when he felt like it; for that, as everything else, was a matter of inclination with him and not of duty. She was fond of reading, and had also somewhat of a talent for music, which made it possible for her to achieve pleasing results with very little real tuition or practice. Fortunately, she had been well taught at the beginning.

Society at Balderville was of the fluctuant, intermittent order that obtains at minor resorts; the crop of visitors was bad or good, according to the year, like the peaches or cotton. With some of these visitors Dosia formed eager, transitory friendships, but with others there could be no assimilation. There were a few nice families settled in the place, more or less bound together by a community of interest centering in Balderville and the future of their children, who were usually sent away to school when half grown.

Youth is a surprisingly concrete thing, possessing faculties of its own—a terrible clear-sightedness, for one thing, and a black-and-white ruled-out sense of justice and injustice; it brought an absolutely new sense of values to Dosia. It was when she was seventeen that it began to dawn upon her that the conditions at home, always looked upon as entirely temporary and sporadic by her father and stepmother, were really the inevitable expressions of law. She saw that the true character of her parents was quite different from their own idea of it; that they would never change materially, and therefore, in the very nature of things, their fortunes could never change materially; they would always be going a little faster or a little slower on a down grade. She wondered at the exhaustless capacity of complacently believing in worn fallacies which her young eyes saw pitilessly as such. Her stepmother still looked upon the father, as he did upon himself, as a successful and energetic man of business for the moment only disabled by his failing health, and believed herself to be always on the point of managing the little money they had with superhuman economy, so that it would cover all household emergencies; only Dosia knew that there could never be more money, and that what there was must always slip away. This knowledge laid the future waste and rendered effort futile. What was the use, for instance, of putting cushions on the lounge over the place where there was a big hole in the cover, until they could buy the new one? There never would be a new one. What was the use of pretending that when the cracked and heterogeneous plates and dishes were replaced the table would be properly set once more? They never would be replaced.

If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they “went together,” and arrangements were made in view of this known fact whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never “gone with” anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked and took care of the children, and read, and found her father’s walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why should she not be?

Theodosia

But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after the day’s work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she was nobly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didn’t know how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living.

Many a night—like many another girl!—Dosia sat in the window of her shelving attic room, bathed in the golden moonlight, with her hair falling on her shoulders and her hands clasped before her, a picture for none to see. The warm summer odors of pine and hickory were around her. The tide of youth was so strong in her heart! In vain she tried to stem it. She longed inexpressibly for that outer world, of which she had read, where youth was a power. In an age of modern young womanhood, clever, self-satisfying, potential, Dosia belonged to the old régime where sentiment still holds sway. She wanted, indeed, to learn more about many things,—she longed to study music,—but she felt no inspiration and no desire for the life of an artist; she was, in fact, just a girl, who longed with vague indefiniteness, yet none the less intensely, for the joyous life of a girl; the pleasure of being sought, the excitement of shining, for music and dancing and little daily delights, and—love. She dimly discerned unknown glories that made her breath come quickly. Dosia dreamed of some one in the far future who would be very good and very noble, whose love would hold her to everything that was beautiful and right, with whom she would prove herself extraordinarily witty and brilliant and fascinating, and whose hand on hers would set her heart beating. She imagined pouring out her heart to him,—that heart which seemed to be forever shut in her breast now, with none to understand it, none to care,—going to him with all these doubts and self-convictions and hopes, and feeling the blessedness of his response. “You darling,” he would say, “don’t you know I was loving you all the time? We neither of us knew each other, to be sure, but the love was there all the same; it had existed since the beginning of the world.”

She began to show the effects of that terrible atrophy which affects not only the mind but the very blood of girlhood, and which does not need iron as a curative power so much as a legitimate and healthy excitement. Even Mrs. Linden noticed that the girl looked thin and pale, and showed listlessness in place of energy, after several neighbors had openly commented on the fact; she said placidly that she was really worried about Dosia, and wished that she could have a change. And then one of those impossible, wonderful things happened which alter the whole surface of the earth. A rich aunt in Cincinnati wrote that Dosia was to go to New York to study music, and spend the winter with a married cousin, Lois Alexander, in one of the suburbs.

Thus it came that Theodosia was journeying North, dressed in a new suit of blue serge, which had been sent from Atlanta, to fit her measure, with the rest of her traveling outfit. As she sat in the Pullman car, with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the seat, and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess.

Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of choice—bleared and shapeless in effect from much “making over,” as purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she almost felt as if it must be wicked. Her skin seemed satin smooth with the clean freshness of dainty linen against it, and the unwonted perfume of the suède gloves was subtly intoxicating. She took furtive glimpses of herself in the glass panel beside her, and the sight filled her with a delighted wonder. She could hardly believe that she really looked so much like other people.

It was her toilet that engaged her attention, not her face; she had that exaggerated idea of the importance of dress which belongs to people who have never been able to exercise their taste or fancy for it—particularly those who live in the country. A bit of bright velvet was like a picture to her, ribbons made a poem; for her face she cared little. It was not beautiful, but sweet and youthful—just a girl’s face; small, quite pale, except when she spoke, when the color varied in it with the moment. She had blue eyes, a good mouth with a short upper lip, white teeth, and a pretty chin. Her blue eyes had a bright, alert look in them that waited on those with whom she held converse; her slender young figure bent slightly forward, while her lips parted unconsciously, as if in deep attention. This, with her varying color, gave her a charm.

But her greatest attraction was still the innocent, artless expression of extreme youth which experience has never touched, which has nothing to remember and nothing to forget—the typical fair white page, still unwritten upon, although she had been twenty on her last birthday.

When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a large brass safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing kisses with the other. That was how Dosia had seen them last. The elders had been so kind about her going, her eyes filled remorsefully at the thought; she had been so shamelessly glad to go! And yet, she did love them. Mingled with a sense of kindness was also a strange little disappointment—she felt that when they turned homeward with their backs to the train they would let her slip out of their lives with the same ease with which they had accustomed themselves to let other things go, with a selfish inertia too deep to feel anything long. Only the baby—little Rolf—he would miss her; he would cry, at any rate for a while, for his Dosia to put him to sleep. Her lips trembled and her arms yearned for him, with a sudden savage instinct of latent motherhood unknown to her placid stepmother. It was characteristic of this girl, who was tired of taking care of children, that the fact of there being a two-year-old baby also at her cousin’s house seemed now its crowning attraction; she turned comfortingly to intimate speculations about the darling.

After a while the rush-rushing of the train, the sense of traveling, blurred out the past for her. She was journeying to the life that was hers by right; the luxurious appointments of the car, her own new elegance, began to seem a part of her, wonted necessaries to which, indeed, she had been born. It was a buffet-car, and she took the card offered her by the white-aproned colored waiter and selected her dinner as she saw others doing. He was so long in bringing it that she thought he had forgotten it; but at last he brought the meal, and she ate it from the table which he had obseqiously fastened up in front of her; there was an exhilaration in the performance of this very simple act which made several people look at her with a smiling indulgence. Afterwards she put her gray felt hat in the rack, and took off her jacket, and made herself comfortable, as she saw others had done. The car was by no means crowded, and she had seen from the first that there was no one who could serve as a peg to hang a romance on—only middle-aged women and men, and a mother with half-grown children. She fell to wondering, as she had done many times before, what her cousins would be like; she was prepared to love them dearly. With the unconscious egotism of her age, everything in this new life was to revolve around her. The other players were accessories—she was the star performer.

The afternoon whirled away amid patches of light and dark, of green and shadow, red clay and somber pine, scattered white houses and rounded overhanging slopes that shut out the day. Dosia looked, and dreamed—and dreamed. Then night closed her into the train, with its crimson plush and gleaming woods and lights, and strange faces, and impalpable cinders, and that rush-rushing still. Then the berths were made up, people sitting the while in tired, silent groups in other sections, holding on to cloaks and hand-bags, before disappearing singly behind the curtains. Dosia crept under hers. She had first tried to braid the brown hair that would curl itself out of the plaits, and then lay down at last without removing any clothing, with both hands tucked under her soft cheek and her eyes staring before her. There had been a bustle of walking to and fro before the berths were made ready, but after a while all was still behind the long curtains, that waved outward a little when the train went suddenly around a curve. Gradually those wide-open blue eyes began to close; she seemed to be floating in a blissful dream on pillows of roseate down, between waking and sleeping; and then—God in heaven! A crash as of a breaking world, an awful, blinding, helpless terror! A giant force had her by the throat, clutching her, beating her against the planks, jamming her into awful darkness as if she were a creature without bone or sinew, while her shrieking voice lost itself among the other voices shrieking. A plunge, and then—nothing.

The night was inky black, and the wind that swept down the gorge brought an occasional raindrop with it. Dosia felt one fall on her cheek. A long while after that she heard voices, then a man’s hand was passed over her face and a voice close above her said, “It is a woman,” and added, bending still nearer to her, “Can you speak?”

Dosia opened her lips, but no sound came from them; instead, she broke into a helpless sobbing in which there were no tears. The man spoke to some one near, and she became aware that there were other sounds of talking and distress around her. Far up above them an occasional light twinkled and disappeared.

Presently the man bent down to her again, and, lifting her head gently, placed something soft under it. His touch was compassionate, and his tone still more so as he said:

“Are you in much pain?”

She tried again to speak, and again the sobbing spoke for her. She wanted to question him, but could not. He seemed to divine her thought.

“Never mind; do not try to answer me. Perhaps you wonder where you are. There has been a terrible accident—the trestle gave way, and one car fell down here; the others, I believe, smashed farther up somewhere. People are coming to us with light and stretchers, and all we have to do now is to wait patiently. I wonder if you will try and do just as I tell you? Move your right foot—yes, there—now your left—now this arm—now the other. Why, that’s brave of you!”—as she tried to raise herself a little. “Perhaps you will be able to stand soon.” He broke off suddenly with a groan: “I wish to Heaven I had some whisky! I wish to Heaven I had! but there’s not a drop left in the flask.”

The wind began to blow harder, and the rain to descend, and the sounds of moving and confusion around increased. The lights Dosia had seen above seemed to get nearer, and then twinkled down close to the wreck; but even then, in the opaque blackness of the night, they remained only isolated points of light, diffusing no radiance around them, as they dipped down to the earth, and rose again, and wavered and went backward and forward; with them came more voices and stumbling feet, sounds half swallowed by the depth of the night and the growing fury of the gusts of wind.

Dosia felt a new and terrible pang of loneliness as the fleeting flash of a lantern above her revealed that there was no one beside her; it was like being dropped again into nothingness. She did not know how long she lay there. With the recognized tones came a returning wave of life, though she scarce knew what was said. A strong arm raised her to a sitting position, and held her there, with her head resting against the shoulder of this new-found friend. “Drink this—all of it. I want to see if you can stand after a few moments, and perhaps walk—there are so few stretchers.” Dosia could feel him involuntarily shudder.

“No, I will not leave you”—he spoke as one would to a little child, as she made a faint, terrified motion to hold his arm—“I will not leave you. I will take you every step of the way. You are a girl, aren’t you? Were you alone on the train? Had you no friends with you?”

She whispered with some difficulty, “No one.”

“You are perhaps spared much.” There was a silence. Presently he said gently: “We must not wait here too long; we must follow the lanterns—see, they are going. You can stand; now try and walk. Give me your hand—that way. Lean on me. Take one step—now another. Come! Don’t be afraid—you must.”

With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost carrying her, she essayed to walk. Shaking at each step pitifully at first, then growing stronger, with one hand locked in his, she found herself ascending the rocky path of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel into which the light was walled solidly. He was leading her along the railroad-ties. As she stumbled from time to time, she became formlessly conscious that he winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly.

He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m hurting you.”

“Not more than I can stand. Don’t stop to talk about it; we mustn’t fall behind. Hold my hand fast.”

The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand—a strong, clean touch, that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow as one in the unspoken comforting of trust.

Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses’ hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them. Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with whom she had exchanged no word of farewell.

She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of which is her greatest good on earth.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow any more.

But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in it. It is the transmutation of metal into the blood—the revivifying power which the seekers after the philosopher’s stone recognized so thoroughly.

He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energy—an energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it.

His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river.

As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich.

Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences—the houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships’ stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that attracted Justin’s particular attention, wedged in as it was between the taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrance—a relic of bygone days—had only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so near the street that it was easy to see into the front room—an interior so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it.

The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up, half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had turned into this street from Broadway.

The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comradeship which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily, and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning.

The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory; from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery. The larger parts of the instrument—the copper tubing and the steel bars—were bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were manufactured.

The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment. Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard Typometer—so called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it. The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They said all it needed now was push.

Thousands of little books entitled “Sixty Seconds with the Typometer” had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive brevity, and in large black print that could be read without glasses, Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers, in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate.

The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been associated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justin’s services would have been needed at all.

As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, muscular arms.

To Justin’s pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of pleasure in his eyes:

“Good morning, sir. I’m glad to see you here so early. You’ve perhaps heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati.”

“No,” said Justin; “I came up here first. That’s good news, Bullen.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve made a list of the stock we’ll need as soon as we can get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. I’ll want to see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men.”

“Very well,” said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the assistant manager.

“And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander,” he said.

They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one, it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best. If orders came in every day like this—and why should they not? if not now, at least in the near future——

The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it. Afterwards——

“By the way, Harker,” he asked once, in an interval of waiting, “what is the concern across the street?”

“It’s much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander.”

Justin looked up, surprised. “I never knew that.”

“Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; it’s the Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after a fashion—not as good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs horribly after you’ve worked it for a while. They’ve got one in the billiard-room around the corner.”

“And this Mr. Cater—has he been in the business long?”

“He was here when we came, two years ago.”

Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a decent place for luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was hardly surprised, when he seated himself by a little white table in a small, rather dark room, to look up and recognize opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L. Cater.

“I was wondering how soon you’d find this place out,” said the latter. He spoke with a Southern drawl. “You don’t get a very large repertoire here, but what they do give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and that’s an art. And it’s clean.”

“Yes,” said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to be usually spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more social feeling toward those who let him alone, but even the shadows of this golden day were translucent.

“I reckon you know who I am—Angevin L. Cater. Angevin’s a queer name, isn’t it? French—several generations back.”

To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was required. After a moment Mr. Cater began again:

“Perhaps you think it’s strange—my speaking to you in this way. Of course I’ve seen you coming to Number 270, and knew that you were taking charge there, but that’s not the whole of it. I’m from Georgia—got a wife and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville now.” He paused to give this impressive fact full weight. “You’ve some relatives there, haven’t you, by the name of Linden?”

“My wife has,” said Justin, with new attention.

“Well, I reckon I heard of you some this fall when I was home. Miss Theodosia was talking of spending the winter North with you, she asked me if I knew Mr. Justin Alexander, and I had to tell her no. I didn’t think I’d meet up with you so soon. Heard from her lately?”

“We expect Miss Linden to-morrow,” said Justin. “How is Mr. Linden getting on? We haven’t heard very good accounts of him lately.”

“Oh, Linden’s a mighty fine man; he ain’t successful, that’s all. I find a heap of mighty fine men that ain’t successful, don’t you? I don’t think it’s anything against a man that he ain’t successful. Besides, old man Linden ain’t got his health; you can’t do anything if you haven’t got your health. His wife’s a mighty fine lady—pretty, too; but she ain’t much on dressin’ up; stays at home and takes care of her children. And Miss Dosia—well, Miss Dosia’s a peach. Talented, too—I tell you, she can bang the ivories! But she’s been kinder pinin’ lately; I reckon she needs a change—though a change isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I’ve found that out, haven’t you? I changed into a New York business two years ago, and it’s taken all my strength to buck up against it till now. I reckon maybe it’ll carry me along all right—now.”

“You’re in the same line that I am, I understand,” said Justin, who had been eating while the other talked.

“Why, yes, you might call it that, I guess both machines started in Connecticut. A cousin of mine owned one, he said Warford stole his idea and got it patented first—I don’t know. When he died he left me what money he had, and I took up the concern. I’ve got a Yankee side to me as well as a Southern side; sometimes I get tuckered out tryin’ to combine ’em.”

“You say that trade is looking up now?” asked Justin.

“Well, yes, it is. The public is beginning to learn the value of time as recorded by the timoscript.” His eyes twinkled. “Our machine is put together better than the Warford. I feel it my duty to say that, Mr. Alexander. It’s simpler, for one thing—there ain’t so many little cogs to catch and get out of order. No complex mechanism; a child can run it—that’s what my circulars say. I believe in advertising, same as you; I don’t object to your booming trade. The more people there are, now, who know there is a time-machine, the more there’ll be to find they’ve had a long-felt want for one, no matter what you call it. And—you shouldn’t hurry over your luncheon so, Mr. Alexander,” for Justin had thrown down his napkin and was rising.

“I’ve got to be back at the office by two,” said Justin, glancing at the clock, which showed five minutes of the hour.

“Oh, you can walk it in three minutes; but of course you’re not down to that yet. I’m glad to have met up with you, sir, and I hope to see you often. I reckon this town’s big enough for two of a kind.”

“Thank you,” said Justin, glad to escape. He had been telling himself during the conversation that he would take care to avoid Mr. Angevin L. Cater’s favorite haunt for the future, but he was surprised to find a change gradually stealing over him after he had left the man. There are some persons, distinctly agreeable at first, whose absence materializes an unexpected aversion to their further acquaintance; others, whose company one has found tedious, leave a wholesome flavor, after all, behind them. Mr. Cater appeared to be of the latter class. Justin found himself smiling with real kindness once or twice as he thought of his opposite neighbor.

But there was little time for turning aside during the afternoon—the evening as well as the morning were component parts of that golden day. The orders that came in gave a wonderful effect of luck, although they were largely the legitimate outcome of well-planned efforts. Justin thought the work of the last six months was bringing its fulfillment now, but this clear stream of accomplishment showed him the way to a mighty ocean. Power, power, power! The sense of it was in his finger-ends as he focused his mind on world-embracing schemes; with that impelling current of strength, he could have turned even failure to success, and he knew it.

The hours were all too short for transacting the business that had to be done, and for all the consultations as to ways and means. It would take some time to put these preparations on a larger scale.

Justin was ready to leave at six o’clock, with a bundle of price-lists under his arm to look over when he got home. The last mail was handed to him just as he was locking his desk.

“There is no use in my looking over these to-night, Harker,” he said. “You can get at them the first thing in the morning. I will be down even earlier than to-day. Stay—” His eye had caught sight of an envelope with the name of a well-known Chicago firm on it. He tore it open, ran his eye rapidly over the contents, and then handed it, with a gesture as of abdication, to Harker. The bookkeeper was the first to break the silence.

“I thought we were getting along pretty rapidly to-day,” he said, “but it seems that we haven’t even started. This tops all! We’ll have to get a big move on, Mr. Alexander. They’re giving us very short time.”

“Yes,” said Justin. He lingered irresolutely, and then laid down his papers with the hat which he held ready to put on, and went over to the safe. He took from it five new ten-dollar bills and tucked them into his waistcoat pocket. They sent a glow to his heart, for they were intended as a little gift to his wife; it seemed to him that this last good fortune had given him the right to make her a visible sharer in it.

As he ran up the steps of his home, he collided with a small boy who was holding a bicycle with one hand and proffering a yellow envelope through the open doorway with an outstretched arm. Lois was taking it. She and Justin read the telegram at the same moment, before it fell fluttering to the ground between them, as both hands dropped it.

“I cannot possibly go,” he said, staring at her.

“Oh, Justin! I will, then—some one must.”

“No, no, you can’t; that’s nonsense. Great heavens! for this to come at such a time!” He broke off again, staring helplessly before him. Leverich was in St. Louis, Martin at his home ill. “Why didn’t the girl start last week, as she intended?”

“Oh, the poor child—don’t blame her. The accident must have been so terrible!”

“Yes—yes, indeed.” He sat down in the hall chair, while his wife signed the telegraph-book which the boy incidentally held open for her as he chewed gum. When she finished, she saw that Justin was pouring over the time-table in an evening paper; he laid it down to say:

“If I start back for town in ten minutes I can catch the eight-thirty train south, and get home again to-morrow night or the morning after, if Theodosia is able to travel. That will only make me lose one day.” One day! He shook his head in bitter impatience.

“Oh, I hate to have you go in this way! Shall I send word to the office for you?”

“No; I’ll write some telegrams on the way in. I’ll run up-stairs and put a few things in the bag, and kiss the children good night—I hear them calling.” He put his hand in his pocket and hurriedly drew out the crisp roll of bills, and looked at them ruefully.

“I brought this money for you, Lois, but I’ll have to take it with me, I’m afraid, for I might run short.” He put his arm around her for a brief instant, in answer to her exclamation. “No, don’t get me anything to eat; I haven’t time, I tell you. I’ll get what I want later, on the train.” In the strong irritation which he was curbing he felt as if he would never want to eat again. He was in reality by nature both kind and compassionate, but the worst sting of trouble lies often in the fact that it is so inopportune.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Are we near New York?”

“Yes,” said Justin, smiling encouragement at his young companion. He stood up and took down from the rack above them Dosia’s jacket, which had been reclaimed from the wreck soaked and torn, and a boy’s cap in lieu of her missing hat.

“You had better put these on now, and then you can rest again for a little while before we have to move.”

It was unavoidable that after the enforced journey the sight of Dosia’s white face and imploring eyes should have filled him with a rush of tender compassion which completely blotted out the previous reluctance from his memory. Few men spend their time regretting past stages of thought, and he had naturally accepted her tremulous thankfulness for his solicitude.

After the long day of travel in Justin’s company, the color had begun to return faintly to Dosia’s lips and cheeks. She was also growing to feel a little more at home with him; he had seemed too much a stranger and she had been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in numberless ways, and thoughtful of her comfort, and always smiled encouragingly when he looked at her. Now, at the journey’s end, he began to talk, in a secret restlessness which he could not own. His mind had been busy all day with the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but as he neared home he could not shake off a haunting premonition of something unpleasant to come.

“Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting the new cousin,” he said.

“Will they?” asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. “But they will be looking out for you as well as for me.”

“Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. But I was wrong in saying that both children would be up, for it will be nearly seven when we reach the house, and they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be there. I hope you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at our house.”

“I love children,” said Dosia, with the solemnity of a profession of faith.

“I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl who has her hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and the rest of it straggles around in light wisps, or is gathered into an inconceivably small pigtail at the back of her neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, little white teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and wisdom, because at the age of six she is the eldest daughter—and that means a great deal, you know.”

“Oh,” said Dosia, “I am an ‘eldest daughter.’” She choked, momentarily, as she thought of the family at home. “Was it only last night that you started for me?” she asked, after a pause during which she had looked hard out of the car-window.

“Yes; I’ve made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky that we could catch that eight-thirty express this morning; if we hadn’t it would have put us back nearly twenty-four hours—and that would have been bad,” he added under his breath.

“Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one day,” said Dosia timidly. She felt somehow away outside of his inner thought, as if she had no inherent place in his mind at all. “You are just starting in business, aren’t you?”

“Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new ventures—Dosia and the typometer appear on the scene at the same moment, starting out on a career together; and for this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is all. I hope we’ll both be equally successful.”

“Yes, indeed.” She responded to his smile, and tried to rally her failing powers.

“I am very glad I went for you.” He regarded her with anxiety. “You could not have made the journey alone.”