She leaned her head upon his breast, clinging to him with an inarticulate murmur for forgiveness, and he smoothed her hair for a moment. She raised her face to his to be kissed, and he kissed her. She humbly asked nothing; she would be satisfied with anything now. She went up to her room, as he bade her, and when she was in bed, he came and sat down by her, and held the hand she mutely placed in his, as her imploring eyes asked. But he had to put a force upon himself to do it. The whole play was distasteful and repugnant beyond words to him; it weakened every bond that bound him to her. He sought for no self-analyzing causes. He had so much care upon him now that more than ever in his life before he needed diversion, sympathy, love, rest—rest above everything else on earth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
To live in the same house, to meet not only at the accepted times, but in all the little passing ways—on the stairs, coming in and out of the door; to meet also in all the little unpremeditated ways that are really premeditated—the going to the library for a book, the searching over this, that, and the other, with all its pretended inconsequence and surprise; the abstraction of two people from the same room at the same time on different pretexts; the lingerings while the minutes grew toward the hour, the sudden hurried partings at a foot-step, the reunion for just a moment more when the foot-step did not come that way—all this unnoticed and casual intercourse with its half-secrecy and hint of the forbidden becomes a large factor in its relation to after-events, when the participants are a man and a woman. There is no influence so little regarded for the young by those in authority as the tremendous influence of propinquity.
Among all the social comings and goings at the Leverichs’, the excitement of Lawson’s presence held its place with Dosia. The sudden sight of his olive profile and his lithe figure, his cool, appraising gaze, his “Well, young lady?” with its ironic tone that yet conveyed a subtle kindness, his lazy, caressing expostulation, “Why not, when we are friends?”—these things made heart-beats that Dosia took pains to assure herself were of a purely Platonic nature, when she stopped at rare occasions to take tally of her emotions, though there was a continual unacknowledged inner protest, in spite of her yielding, which made her resolve each day to withdraw a little on the next. But they never talked of love; they talked only of goodness, or art, or music, or about the way you felt about different subjects, or little teasing things, like why she drew her mouth down at the corners when he looked at her, or why she had seemed to disapprove the night before. They were bound together by the hope of higher things. She met him always in the morning with the bright uplifting smile that said, “I know you will repay my confidence—for I believe in you!”
“I really wish Lawson would go away,” said Mrs. Leverich, one day, as the two sat over their afternoon tea together.
“Why?” asked Dosia, with the suddenly concentrated composure his name always brought her outwardly. “I thought you said last week that he had improved so much.”
“Oh, yes, he’s had one of his good streaks lately; and he is a sweet fellow when he’s nice—he was the dearest little boy! Lawson can twist me around his little finger when he wants to; he knows that he can get money out of me every time, even when he oughtn’t to have it. But he can’t keep up this sort of thing long, you know, he is so restless; there’s bound to be a breakdown afterwards. I dread it; the breakdowns get worse, now, every time.”
“Perhaps there will be no breakdown, after all,” said Dosia, in an even voice, but with that sudden deep sensation of disenchantment which his sister’s words always brought to her, and which lay upon her spirit like a living thing, dragging her fancy in chains. It was not alone Mrs. Leverich’s words, either, that had this power; when anyone spoke of Lawson it brought the same displeasing uneasiness, followed by the wonted eager remorsefulness later, when she saw him. But through each phase one foundational sense held good—he was not at all the kind of man she would ever want to marry; the whole attraction of the situation was in the fact that one could be so nobly intimate, and still keep off the danger-ground. Once or twice he had seemed to be infringing on it, and then she had turned him aside with sweet solemnity and additional inner excitement.
These were days indeed! It was Lent, but there were all the minor pleasures of luncheons and card-parties, and little evening entertainments held at Mrs. Leverich’s hospitable mansion. It mattered not whether there was anything going on in the town or not; society focused at her house, with Dosia for the central point. When she thought of going back again to Lois it was with a blank shiver.
Lois, indeed, had not been well lately; the children were out of quarantine, but she had a sore throat, and kept her room under the care of a trained nurse. Dosia had not seen her, but only Justin, who looked tired and older. Dosia was not to return now until after Easter and after the ball—Mrs. Leverich was going to give a ball for Dosia; it was to be, in a sense, her “coming out.”