“As you passed now?” cried Dosia, startled. “Are the children worse?” An unacknowledged compunction, which she had felt through all her pleasures, at leaving the sick household, sprang swiftly to the front. “Oh, I’m so afraid Redge and Zaidee are worse! I wish I could go there at once and see!”
“If they only had a telephone,” began Mrs. Leverich, for the twentieth time. “I can send——”
“Oh, if I could only go myself!” interrupted Dosia, looking utterly miserable in her sudden wild anxiety.
“You could have the carriage—but James is asleep.” Mrs. Leverich looked almost as miserable as Dosia in her baffled hospitality. “But if you don’t mind walking——”
“No—oh, no!”
“Then Lawson can take you, of course. There are some wraps in the hall; I’ll pin your dress up, so that you won’t need to take the time to change it. Must you go, Ada? Then you can all walk down together. Mr. Leverich would have offered to go with you himself, I know, Dosia,—wouldn’t you, Joseph?—if it were not for his cold. But Lawson can take you, of course!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lois, left in charge of a measles-stricken household, had plenty to keep her hands busy, and yet, as there was no particular anxiety attaching to the disease, plenty of time for meditation. She possessed the unfortunate quality of being able to keep up two lines of thought at the same time, so that little occupations really occupied only a small corner of her mind, and the larger part was continually taken up with the subject of larger interest—herself. While she rocked the children and sang to them, and cut out pictures, and prepared their meals, and took care of them all day with the aid of a young nurse-maid, she was unceasingly traversing a country wherein she walked alone and in exile. The quarantine had shut her in more rigorously upon herself; there were now no distractions. Her husband was more anxious about the children than she was, and seriously distressed at first that so much was thrown upon her; he had wanted to get a trained nurse at once, but after her assurances that she did not mind staying in, that her exertions did not tire her, and that she much preferred matters as they were, he accepted this version without further question or comment, and went about his affairs, satisfied that she knew best in this her own department. It is a well-known fact that quarantine, the observance of which is exacted down to the last second of its limit from the women of a household, does not affect the bread winner of it, who goes and comes immune; Justin thought it his duty, in view of this fact, to be as careful as possible about being much with the children. He stood obediently outside of the nursery door and talked to them from there when Lois said, “You had better not come in.” When she refused a service offered by him, he did not press it again. He frequently stayed late at the office, and got his dinner in town, or, if he did come home, he went out again to spend the long evenings, in which she had to be up-stairs, at houses where there were no children to be kept from contagion, and where he could talk to men. He was really so busy that, though he was ready to help his wife in any way that she would indicate, it was an immense relief to be able to leave the conduct of affairs to her. There was, besides, a curious hardness of manner in her which he unconsciously resented—she seemed to hold herself aloof from him, and there was no allurement to follow. That temporary indifference which those who love allow themselves sometimes, with the clear knowledge that it is only indifference because they do allow it, to be merged into dearest companionship at will—this had been pushed too far. It is a dangerous thing to let love slip away, even for the pleasure of regaining it.
It seemed pitiful beyond words to Lois that she should have to stand alone now. She could have done this willingly if she had been by herself, but to stand alone in this dual solitude, where she might have had support—she could not understand it. She wept uncontrollably with the pity of it, and dashed the tears away that she might smile, red-eyed, upon her children, who could not feel the pathos of her effort.
There is little provision made in most girlhood for that independence of living which marriage unexpectedly forces upon a woman, in many instances, in almost as great a degree as when she is thrown out into the world upon her own resources. To be high and fine, rational and spirited, cheerful and loving, quite by one’s self, without audience or applause, takes a new kind of strength, to which the muscles are little trained. A woman can reach almost any height on a spurt for praise or recognition; but to get up, sit down, eat, drink, walk, read, sleep, care for the children, order the meals, as a rational human being whose business it was to perform these functions intelligently, with no personality attached to it—to have it taken for granted that she would naturally order her life as suited her best, and desired no interference—it was like being pushed out into the cold.