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?