The sunshine fell upon her in the garden; she was bathed in it. Whether she had nights of straining, bitter wakefulness and days of heartache afterwards, this joy of loving was enough for her to-day—the joy of loving him. She saw, in that lovely, brooding thought of him, what that first meeting had taught of his character, and molded in with it her knowledge of him now, to make the real man far more imperfect, though far dearer. Yet, if he ever loved her as she loved him, part of that for which she had always sought love would have to be foregone—she could never come to him, as she had fondly dreamed of doing, and pour out to him all those hopes and fears, those struggles and mistakes and trials and indignities, the shame and the penitence that had been hers. She could never talk of Lawson—her past must be forever unshriven and uncomforted. Bailey Girard would be the last man on earth to whom she could bare her heart in confession; these were the things that touched him on the raw. He “hated the sound of Lawson’s name.” How many times had George Sutton’s face blotted out hers? If he knew that! She must forever be unshriven. There would be things also, perhaps, that she could not bear to hear! The eternal hurt of love, that it never can be truly one with the beloved, touched her with its sadness, and then slipped away in the thought of him now—not just the man who was to help and protect her with his love, but the man whom she longed to help also. His pleased eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell over his forehead—— She thought of him with the fond dream-passion of the maiden, that is often the shyest thing on earth, ready to veil itself and turn and elude and hide at the first chance that it may be revealed.
“Dosia! Dosia, where are you?”
Suddenly she saw that the sunshine had faded out, the sky had grown gray, a chill wind had sprung up. All the trouble, all the stress of the world, seemed to encompass her with that tone in the voice of Lois.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Justin has come home ill, he was taken with a chill as soon as he got to town; he drove back in a carriage from the station. I want you to telephone for the doctor, and ask him to get here as soon as he can.” Lois spoke with rapid distinctness, stooping as she did so to pick up the scattered toys on the floor and push the chairs into place, as one who mechanically attends to the usual duties of routine, no matter what may be happening. “And, Dosia!” she arrested the girl as she was disappearing, “I may not be down-stairs again. Will you see about what we need for meals? My pocket-book is in the desk. And see about the children. They’re in the nursery now, but I’ll send them down; they had better play outdoors, where he won’t hear them.”
“Oh, yes, yes; I’ll attend to everything,” affirmed Dosia hurriedly, while Lois disappeared up-stairs. For a man to stop work and come home because he is not well argues at once the most serious need for the act. It is the public crossing of the danger zone.
With all her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of Justin’s illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness of her eyes, in the fullness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the commonplace surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would go off together—anything to make him forget, even though the effort left her breathless afterwards. When she went out of the room and came back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been, with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the more quickly to go down-town again if the doctor “fixed him up,” though now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones.
There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr. Angevin L. Cater.
“I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and as I had to come out this way on business, I thought I’d just drop in and see if there was anything I could do for him in town,” he stated to Dosia.
“I’ll find out,” said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word that Justin would like to see the visitor.