"A bachelor has use for so few things, Miss Linden," he said apologetically. "Each lady makes me promise-weeks beforehand-to come and buy from her especial table. If they would only have something I _could_ want,"-he looked at her humorously,-"it would be easy enough to keep my word. Why don't they ever sell things a man can use? But look for yourself, Miss Linden-it's charity to help me out." He paused irresolutely by a yellow-draped table. "Might you like some sewing-bags, now, or this piece of linen with little holes in it, or any of these-plush arrangements?"

"No!" said Dosia, laughing and shaking her head, "I mightn't."

"Or a doll, now?" He had strayed a step farther on. "Would you like a doll for Mrs. Alexander's little girl, and some of these charming toys?"

"Oh, how _lovely_ of you!" said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent grat.i.tude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon the scene. George Sutton's seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied Spanish in a night cla.s.s. He had given a dozen or more years of his life to ama.s.sing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his sentimental remarks had been confided by one girl to another. But further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone.

Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it permanently on one person. George Sutton's heart performed the pleasing miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had never made a bad bargain.

Dosia's grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time until the dancing began.

Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn, without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons or of lambs could have propitiated the G.o.ds who presided over the Terpsich.o.r.ean art, Mr. Sutton's domestic altars would have been reeking with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little boy.

It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever the peculiar effect of being unlike other people-his overcoat hung carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact that he had lingered in her thought at all.

He had been the subject of Lois' conversation on one of the afternoons of Dosia's convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about him, she was met by the casual answer, "Oh, everybody knows what Lawson is." He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he carried no weight, and there seemed to be social limitations which it was an understood thing that he was not to pa.s.s.

Seven or eight years before, he had come from the little country town of his birth with a past such as places of the kind are too fatally apt to fasten upon the boys who grow up in them. Witty, talented, good-hearted, Heaven only knows to what terrible influences Lawson Barr's idle youth had been subject; and n.o.body in his new home had cared to hear. Scandal may be interesting, but one instinctively avoids filth. It was an understood thing, when he first came to Woodside, that his brother-in-law, Joseph Leverich, had lifted him out of "a sc.r.a.pe" in response to the appeal of a weeping aunt, and had brought the boy back with him to get him away from village temptations and subst.i.tute the more bracing conditions of city life, where entertainment that was not vicious could be had.

The experiment had apparently worked well; in the eight years which Lawson Barr had pa.s.sed in Woodside, no one had anything bad to tell of him. He was more inclined to the society of men than of women, and shared the imputation of being fond of what is called "a good time"; but he was never seen really under the influence of liquor. Shy in general company at first, he became rather a favorite afterwards in a certain way; he was fond of sports, and was very kind to women and children; he was also witty and clever, and played entrancingly on the piano when he was in the mood; he was one of those gifted people who can play, after their own fashion, on any instrument. When he felt pleasantly inclined, no one was more amiable; in another humor, he spoke to no one. He had become engaged to a girl in good standing, after a summer flirtation.

The girl had come there on a visit, and the engagement lasted only until her return and the revelation of his prospects to parental inspection.

For Lawson never had any prospects-or, at least, they never solidly materialized. He never kept his positions for more than a few months at a time. There was always a different reason for this, more or less unimportant on each occasion, but the fact remained the same. Strangers whom he met invariably took a great interest in him, and, captivated by his undoubted cleverness and charm, were enthusiastic in finding new openings for him, ready to champion hotly his merits against that most galling of all criticism, which consists in the simple statement of adverse facts.

"You will never be able to make anything out of him," was a sentence which his relays of friends were sure to hand on to one another.

One summer Lawson had come down so far as to keep the golf-grounds in order-a position, however, which he filled in such a well-bred manner, and with so many niceties of consideration for everyone's comfort, that to have him around considerably enhanced the pleasures of the game, and the players were sorry when he bought a commutation-ticket once more and started going in to town mornings as one of them.

Part of the time he boarded at a small hotel in the village, and part of the time he stayed with the Leverichs; rumor said that Leverich alternately turned him out or welcomed him, as he lost or renewed patience, but the relations of the two men, as seen by outsiders, always appeared to be friendly.

Welcomed at the outset kindly by a society willing to forget the youthful faults of the handsome, clever boy, and let him in on probation to the outer edges of it, it was a singular fact that after all these years of apparent respectability he had made no further progress.

There are men who come out of crucial youthful experiences with a certain inner purity untouched; with an added reverence for goodness, and a strength of character all the greater for the sheer effort of retrieval; whose eyes are forever ashamed when they look back on the sins that were extraneous to the true nature, leaving it, save for the painful scars, clean and whole. With poor Lawson there had been, perhaps, some inherent flaw in which the poison lodged, to a deterioration, however delicate, of the whole tissue. It is strange-or, rather, it is not strange-that, in spite of respectability of life, with nothing whatever that was tangible to contravene it, this should have been thing each person is bound to make, irresponsive of what felt of Lawson Barr. An individual impression is the one he does, and the combined judgment of the members of an intelligent suburban community is very keen as to character, no matter how it differs in regard to actions. The standard of morality in such a section is high-it may indulge occasionally in the witticisms and literature of a lower scale, but in social relations the lesser order must go. "Shadiness" is d.a.m.ning. Lawson was not exactly "shady," but he might be. No girl was ever supposed to fall in love with him, and a young man who was seen too intimately with him received a sort of reflected obloquy. Strangers whom he impressed favorably always asked, as Dosia did, "Why, what has he _done_?" And received the same reply Lois gave her: "Oh, nothing."

"Isn't he-nice?"

"Yes, nice enough, as far as that goes. He can't seem to make a living; I don't know why-he's clever enough. There's really nothing against him though, except that he was wild when he was a boy. I have heard that when he goes away on trips he-drinks. But Justin wouldn't like me to say it; he hates to have people talked about in this way. Still-it's just as well that you should know all about him."

"Oh, yes," said Dosia, in a tone personifying clear intelligence, yet in reality mystified. She felt at once indignant at the imputations thrown on Mr. Barr, and yet a little ashamed of having liked him, as something in bad taste.

As she saw him now in the doorway, she rather hoped that he wouldn't come and speak to her at all; but the hope was vain, for, without apparently seeing her, he made his way through the room, at the cessation of the dance, and held out his ungloved hand for hers.

It is in one of George MacDonald's stories that Curdie, the hero, tests everyone he meets by a hand-clasp, which unconsciously reveals the true nature to his magic sense; claws and paws and hoofs and the serpent's writhe are plain to him. Since the walk in the darkness, Dosia involuntarily tested the feeling of palm to palm by the hand that had held hers then; the dreaming yet deep conviction was strong within her that some day she would meet and recognize her helper by that remembered touch, if in no other way. Mr. Barr's hand was smooth, with long fingers, and a lingering, intimate clasp. Dosia drew hers away quickly, with a flush on her cheek, and then felt, as she met his coolly appraising eyes, that she had done something school-girlish and ill-bred.

"You did not come to see me, after all," she said, when the first greeting was over, and could have bitten out her tongue for saying it.

"I regretted very much not being able to," he replied, in a tone of conventional politeness. "I went West the next day, and have only just returned. You have been enjoying yourself, I hope?"

"Oh, immensely," said Dosia, with exaggerated emphasis; "I couldn't have had a better time, possibly." Her eyes roved toward the people in front of them with studied inattention, although she was strangely conscious in every tingling fiber of the presence of the man by her side.

"You have been to town, I suppose?" he pursued.

"Yes, indeed, several times."

"Would you care to come out in the corridor and walk?" he asked abruptly, as the music struck up again. "I'm not in evening dress, you see; I only returned from my trip half an hour ago. Or would you prefer to dance?" he added.

"Oh, I prefer to dance!" said Dosia, with the first natural inflection her voice had possessed in speaking to him.

"Then I will ask you to excuse me. I see Billy Snow coming over for you.

Good night."

"You are not going to leave _now_?" exclaimed Dosia, with disappointment too quick to be concealed.

"In a few moments; I may not see you again." He did not offer his hand this time, but bowed and was gone.

It was the last dance. Billy Snow, slim and young, was a good partner, and Dosia's feet were light, yet, for the first time that evening, she did not feel the buoyancy of dancing; the flavor of it was lost. As they circled around the room, she saw that the booths were being dismantled of their blue and crimson and yellow draperies, the decorations were being torn from the walls, and cloaks and boxes routed out from under the tables. The receivers of money were busily counting up the piles of silver. A few children ran up and down at the end of the room, on the smooth floor, unchecked, and a small boy lay asleep on a bench, while his mother lamented her husband's prolonged absence to everyone who pa.s.sed. Each minute the crowd in the room thinned out more and more, going out by twos and threes and fours, leaving fewer couples on the floor and a scattered line of chaperons against the wall. But the dancers who were left clung to their privilege. As the clock struck twelve, and the musicians got up to leave, a cry of protest arose:

"One more waltz-just one more! This is the best part of the evening.

Lawson-Lawson Barr, give us a waltz! Ah, no, don't say you're too tired-play!"

Young Billy Snow stood with his arm half withdrawn from Dosia's waist, looking questioningly down at her.

"I think I'd better go," she murmured uncertainly, loath to depart, yet with a glance toward Lois, who, with Justin now standing beside her, was plainly expectant of departure. Lois had had no dancing-yet she was young, too. But at that moment the music struck up again-there was a crash of chords, and then a strain, wildly sweet, to which Dosia found herself gliding into motion ere she was aware. She knew before she looked that Lawson Barr was at the piano. His intent face, bent upon the keys, seemed remote and sad.

The big room was nearly empty. One of the high windows had been opened for air, revealing the shining of the stars far up above in the bluish-black sky; below it a heap of tall white chrysanthemums stood ma.s.sed to be taken away. There were barely a dozen couples on the polished floor. These had caught the white fire of a dance played as Dosia had never heard one played before; there was a wild swing to it that got into the blood and made the pulses leap in unison. The dancers flew by on swift and swifter feet, with paling cheeks and gleaming eyes.

Dosia was dancing with Billy Snow, it was his arm around her on which she leaned, but to her intense imagining it was with Lawson Barr that she whirled, with closed eyes, on a rushing and delicious air that swept them past the tinkling shivers of icy falls into a white, white garden of moon-flowers, with the silver stars above. From the flowers to the stars she swung in that long, entrancing strain-from the flowers to the stars! From the stars-ah, whither went that flight of ecstasy-this endless, undulating, dreaming whirl? Down to the flowers again now-back to the stars; beyond, beyond-oh, whither?

A chord, sharp and strong, rent the music into silence. It brought Dosia to the earth, awake and trembling, with parted lips and panting breath.

But her eyes had the wonder still in them, her face the whiteness of the flowers, as, with head thrown back, her bright loosened hair touching the blue of her gown, the trailing folds of which had slipped unnoticed from her hand, she walked across the floor with Billy. Her loveliness, as she smiled, brought a pang to the woman-soul of Lois, it was so plainly of the evanescent moment; she felt that it was filched from the future possession of some dearest lover, who could never know his loss.

"I hope I haven't let you stay too long, Dosia," she said practically, and Justin hurried her into her wraps, after she had given Billy the rose he asked for. Everybody was leaving at once in couples, laughing and chattering, with the lights turned out behind them as they went.

The last thing which Dosia saw as she left the hall with Justin and Lois was a side view of Lawson Barr going down the stone steps, carrying in his arms the child who had fallen asleep on one of the benches. The light head rested on his shoulder, and the long black-stockinged legs hung down over his arm. Beside him walked the mother, voluble in thanks, with the child's cap in her hand.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence known locally as "going to Stevens'"; in other words, he was a daily attendant at the inst.i.tute of that name, situate on the heights of Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied fitfully as he journeyed.

Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her William's ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact, Billy was a young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of circ.u.mstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his mother's exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had had the first convincing "shy"; she had complained untiringly to parents by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadn't been the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mother's att.i.tude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow.

The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently experiencing the tender pa.s.sion since the age of seven, she regarded only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude boys.

With added years Billy's outward demeanor had changed in his daily journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare; he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat, or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-pa.s.sengers one day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him, or whether he was "up against it again" at Stevens, his replies were unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him.

The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose and a dark mustache-the nose and the mustache turned sideways much oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and Billy swore under his breath.