The Wayfarers Part 2

"It is a great deal to have to pay back," she said anxiously, leaning forward to throw a small log on the fire. "I don't like you to saddle yourself with such a debt. I don't like it!"

What weighed on him most-the personal care and responsibility-made no impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a woman's horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace.

"I wish you could get along without the money."

"I'm glad enough to have it," he replied. "Rest a.s.sured, Lois, if they didn't think me worth it they wouldn't lend it to me-they expect big interest on their investment."

"And is our living to come out of it, too?"

"Oh, yes-until there's an income."

"How much will you take?"

"Oh, no fixed sum-just as little as we can get along with at present.

We'll go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our feet."

"Indeed, I'll economize!" She clasped her hands earnestly. "There are only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we can't do without. After that we'll need next to nothing. This rug, for instance-it's in rags, I'm ashamed to bring anyone up here-but that won't cost much, and we've _got_ to get one for the front hall; it isn't decent. And I'll have to buy the children's winter clothing before it gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last year's coat looks like a ruffle."

"Oh, of course, get what is needed," said the father resignedly. "Some money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you can."

She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back her lost ground.

"Ah, don't let's leave the fire yet," she pleaded, as he made a motion to rise. "I want to sit here a few minutes more, and it's going to blaze up so beautifully! It's so seldom that we ever really get a chance to talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this way. I've hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill-a man with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children and for me you would have left the place long ago."

"If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it now," he answered gently.

"Yes, I know. It's been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately, I've seen how worried you were. Dear, I don't want to be a drag; I want to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can."

"You always help me."

"Ah, no, I don't; _I_ feel it, though you may not." She paused, and went on again with a tremulous note in her voice: "Justin, I miss you so much sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadn't seen you at all!"

"You see all there is of me," said Justin tersely. "How many times a year do I go out of an evening without you?"

"Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I don't get any chance at all. You _never_ ask me anything, or notice when I don't feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill and I not know it?"

"No, I suppose not," said Justin. "But I'm afraid you'll have another headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois."

"No, I will not!" She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely.

She tried to speak evenly as she said: "I didn't mean that to sound as if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make things-different."

She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his gaze.

It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To live one's own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the large known phenomena of nature.

Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century-life must be nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one's inner limit of youth lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of themselves as young married people with a future all to come.

The tender proprietors.h.i.+p of Justin's caress was more comforting to Lois than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind preoccupied with divergent claims.

The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly s.p.a.ce to walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys-a doll's cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor were picture-books and a fas.h.i.+on magazine. There was nothing to speak of the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar upon his hearthstone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame_]

Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her estimate of him-the honor, the sweetness, the force, the n.o.bility of disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of those he liked, the love of her-all were there; but she was beginning gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that s.h.i.+ning outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and preference and habit of which she knew nothing-only as time went on did she begin to perceive the extent of it.

Those disappointing moments when they were not in accord-whole days sometimes dropped out of the week-left a void which no caresses filled.

It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed.

Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of those men to whom women, in spite of the companions.h.i.+p of wedlock, are a thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything was more or less upsetting,-marriage, babies, sickness, housekeeping,-years when domestic situations changed their shape daily, an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him, after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end; when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a contradiction to everything that she had ever been before.

The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night, was lacking.

When she spoke again it was to say: "When do you take the new place?"

"Next month."

"I am so glad you will be your own master at last! Will you go in on a later train in the mornings, dear?"

"I'll take an earlier one."

"But then you'll come out sooner in the afternoon?"

"I'll come out much later."

"Oh, oh!" she sighed, with the prevision of long hours of loneliness for herself.

"At least, you can take more than that miserable two weeks' holiday in the summer."

"My dear girl, I shall probably have no vacation at all. You don't understand; I've got to work."

There was another pause. The fire was burning low, and the room had sunk into partial obscurity. She was the first to speak, as before, conquering anew the tremulousness in her voice:

"Did you hear me say that Theodosia is coming next month?"

"Yes. How long is she to stay?"

"For all winter. She's to study music, you remember?"

"For all winter!" He sat up straight with the emphasis of his words.

"Why, where will you put her?"

"Oh, I'll manage that. But I do wish we had a larger house; this is maddening sometimes."

"Perhaps we'll be able to build some day."

"Oh, if we could really have our own house!"

She paused, her imagination leaping forward to that future which is the summit of good to suburban dwellers, when the contracted s.p.a.ce of a rented house can be changed for a roomy one honeycombed with impossible closets and lined with hard-wood floors throughout.