"Oh, knock on wood all you want to," returned Justin.

He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers.

It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week.

While he was waiting for a car to pa.s.s before he crossed the street, his eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him:

GREAT CRASH CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL IN BOSTON

CHAPTER TWENTY

"I don't think Justin looks very well," said Dosia that afternoon. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not very strong.

The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with only a round forehead and a small pink nose visible, was of that satisfactory variety entirely given to sleep; Zaidee and even Redge, adoring little sister and brother, had been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely unstirring was their small burden. Lois, who had pa.s.sionately rebelled against the prospect of additional motherhood, exhibited a not unusual phase of it now in as pa.s.sionately adoring this second boy. He seemed peculiarly, intensely her own, not only a baby, but a spiritual possession that communicated a new strength to her. Lois was changed.

She had always been beautiful, as a matter of fact, but there was now something withheld, mysterious, in her expression, as if she were taking counsel of some half-slumberous force within, like one listening at a sh.e.l.l for the murmur of the ocean.

Not only Lois, but everything else, seemed changed to Dosia, at the same time being also flatly, unchangeably natural. She had longed-oh, how she had longed!-to be back here. Even while loving and working in her so-called home, she had felt that this was her real home, although here her cruelest blows had fallen on her; even while bleeding with the wrench of parting from her own flesh and blood, she had felt that this was the true home, for here she had really lived-and it was the home of the nicer, more delicate instincts. After the crude housekeeping, the lack of comforts that made the simplest nursing a grinding struggle with circ.u.mstance, it was a blessed relief to get back to a sphere where minor details were all in order as a matter of course. The Alexanders, with their three children, kept only one maid now, but even that restriction did not prevent the unlimited flow of hot and cold water!

Yet she had also dreaded this returning,-how she had dreaded it!-with that old sickening shame which came over her inevitably as she thought of certain people and places and days. The mere thought of seeing Mrs.

Leverich or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was like pa.s.sing through fire. One braces one's self to withstand the pain of scenes of joy or sorrow revisited, to find that, after all, when the moment comes, there is little of that dreaded pain-it has been lived through and the climax pa.s.sed in that previsioning which imagination made more intense, more harrowingly real, than the reality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Even Redge had been allowed to hold him_]

Mrs. Leverich stopped her carriage one day to greet Dosia, and to ask her, with a tentative semblance of her old effusion, to come and make her a visit-an effusion which immediately died down into complete non-interest, on Dosia's polite refusal; and the incident was not especially heart-racking at the time, though afterwards it set her unaccountably trembling. Mrs. Leverich had in the carriage with her a small, thin, long-nosed, under-bred-looking man with a pale-reddish mustache and hair, who, gossip said, pa.s.sed most of his time at the Leverichs'-he was seen out driving alone with Myra nearly every day. He was "an old friend from home." It had been gossip at first, but it was growing to be scandal now, with audible wonder as to how much Mr.

Leverich knew about it.

Her avoidance of George Sutton was as nothing to his desire of avoiding her; he dived with surrept.i.tious haste down side streets when he saw her coming, or disappeared within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted him inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce to take off his hat and murmur, "Good morning," he turned pale and was evidently scared to death. After this he only appeared in the village street guarded on either side by a female Snow-usually Ada and her mother, though occasionally Bertha served as escort instead of the latter. The elder Snows, in spite of this apparent security, were in a state of constant nervous tension over Mr. Sutton's attention to Ada; he had not "spoken" yet, but it had begun to be felt severely of late that he ought to speak. Whenever Ada came into the house, her face was eagerly scanned by both mother and sister to see from its look if it bore any trace of the fateful words having been uttered. Everyone knew, though how no one could tell, that that bold thing, Dosia Linden, had tried to get him once, and failed.

The thing that had unaccountably stirred her most since her arrival was an unexpected meeting with Bailey Girard. Dosia, with Zaidee and Redge held by either hand and pressing close to her as they walked merrily along, suddenly came upon a gray-clad figure emerging from the post-office; he seemed to make an instinctive movement as if to draw back, that sent the swift color to her cheeks and then turned them white. Were all the men in the place trying to avoid her? Dosia thought, with bitter humor; but, if it were so, he instantly recovered himself, and came forward, hat in hand, with a quick access of bright courtesy, a punctilious warmth of manner. He walked along with her a few paces as he talked, lifting Zaidee over a flooded crossing, before going once more on his way. He was nothing to Dosia, the stranger who had killed her ideal, yet all day it was as if his image were photographed in the colors of life upon the retina of her eye; she could not push it away, try as she might.

Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through the letters written by Lois; he had been reported as going on in his old way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her now position of sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an outsider any more; she _belonged_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _After this he only appeared in the village street guarded on either side by a female Snow_]

As she sat bending over Lois now, her att.i.tude was instinct with something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be loved, now felt-after a year of trial and conflict with death-that she only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but when Dosia "said her prayers," she got, child-fashion, very near to a Someone who brought her an intimate, tender comfort of resurrection and of life.

"I don't think Justin seems well," she repeated, Lois, looking up at her with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice of the remark. "He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I came."

"He has something on his mind," a.s.sented Lois, with a note of languor in her voice, "I suppose it's the business-I made up my mind to ask him about it to-night; he has been out every evening lately, and I hardly see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don't get down to breakfast."

"Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning," cried Dosia, with compunction at having so far forgotten it. "He said that Mr. Larue had come in to inquire about you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow."

"Eugene Larue!" Lois' lips relaxed into a pleased curve, a slight color touched her cheek. "That was very nice of him; he knew I'd like to look forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!"

"I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after you," continued Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes.

"Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows'. Billy's out West."

"So I've heard," said Dosia.

It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her pathway now, after that desire was gone!

"You'd better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired, it's time for you to take a little rest. I'll see to the children, I hope baby will stay asleep. Let me put this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the shades?"

"No, I'd rather have the light. Please hand me that book over there on the stand," said Lois, holding out her hand for the big, old-fashioned brown volume that Dosia brought to her.

"You oughtn't to read, you ought to go to sleep," said Dosia, with tender severity.

"I'm not going to read," returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with him-alone with him, to think.

The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the t.i.tle-page proclaimed, "The Woman's Kingdom," and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her convalescence-in all the time she had had it, she had never read any further than that t.i.tle-page.

There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again, spiritually as well as physically; in those long, restful hours afterwards, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision, and a peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown before.

Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her-for a little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband's gaze when he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child.

One evening he came in to sit by her,-her convalescence had been a long and dragging one,-and she had paused in the midst of telling him something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief s.p.a.ce he had fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly exhausted! Everything proclaimed it-his att.i.tude, grimly grotesque in the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly lifeless. He slept without moving,-almost, it seemed, without breathing,-while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, never--

Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, "Did you speak?"

"Oh, you frightened me so! Don't go to sleep like that again," said Lois, with a shaking voice. "Come here."

He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers with a rush of painful emotion. "Why, you mustn't get worked up over a little thing like that," he objected lightly, going out of the room afterwards with a rea.s.suring smile at her, while she gazed after him with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought of him without any idea of benefit to herself.

The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the t.i.tle arrested her attention oddly-"The Woman's Kingdom." Another phrase correlated with it in her memory-"Queen of the Home." The home was supposed to be woman's domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. _The Woman's Kingdom, Queen of the Home._ Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby's fingers; _they_ kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the heart of her husband-there lay her woman's kingdom, her realm, her G.o.d-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as her rule made it; she must be judged by her government-as she was queen enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words.

Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,-set in motion by those magic words,-when she lay at rest in the afternoons, with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never perceive from imagination, but only from experience-who cannot even adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not personally lived through. No advice touches them, for the words that embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same circ.u.mstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom look back-the present, that is always climbing on into the future, occupies them exclusively.

Lois with "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand, felt that some source of power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish thoughts came with the words-historic names of women whom men had loved devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other generations; Queens indeed! She couldn't really interest one man! She thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the street had no other object in life than purveying to the household comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage, nothing more; they were bored to death by each other's society. Another couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young.

Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired her most of all was un.o.btrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it accomplished?

How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue-she could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her woman's kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to know-get his guidance-But Lois was before all things inviolably a wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test-the man who was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband.

Justin!

With "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well-that was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able to think of nothing, of no one, but her-he had not always thought of her! No, no-she would not remember that, _she would not pity herself_.

She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort-men liked you to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he didn't look well. Oh, when he came home to-night--!

She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply blue. The children exclaimed over their "pretty mamma"; she looked younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could not help saying:

"How lovely you are, Lois! And you're all dressed up, too; do you expect anyone?"

"Only Justin," said Lois.

"Only Justin"! The words brought an exquisite joy with them-only Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour now until dinner-time. It had pa.s.sed, and he had not come; but he was often late-Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterwards, an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop; Lois, divested of her rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up again, to find Lois at last lying down.

"It's eleven o'clock, Lois; I think I'll go to bed. Shall I leave the gas burning down-stairs?"