Nobody Part 129

"Lois! what is it?" he asked, folding his arms about her.

"Philip, it smites me!"

"What, my darling?" he said, almost startled. And then she lifted up her face and looked at him.

"To know myself so happy, and to see them so unhappy. Philip, they are not happy,--neither one of them!"

"I am afraid it is true. And we can do nothing to help them."

"No, I see that too."

Lois said it with a sigh, and was silent again. Philip did not choose to push the subject further, uncertain how far her perceptions went, and not wis.h.i.+ng to give them any a.s.sistance. Lois stood silent and pondering, still within his arms, and he waited and watched her. At last she began again.

"We cannot do _them_ any good. But I feel as if I should like to spend my life in making people happy."

"How many people?" said her husband fondly, with a kiss or two which explained his meaning. Lois laughed out.

"Philip, _I_ do not make you happy."

"You come very near it."

"But I mean-- Your happiness has something better to rest on. I should like to spend my life bringing happiness to the people who know nothing about being happy."

"Do it, sweetheart!" said he, straining her a little closer. "And let me help."

"Let you help!--when you would have to do almost the whole. But, to be sure, money is not all; and money alone will not do it, in most cases.

Philip, I will tell you where I should like to begin."

"Where? I will begin there also."

"With Mrs. Barclay."

"Mrs. Barclay!" There came a sudden light into Philip's eyes.

"Do you know, she is not a happy woman?"

"I know it."

"And she seems very much alone in the world."

"She is alone in the world."

"And she has been so good to us! She has done a great deal for Madge and me."

"She has done as much for me."

"I don't know about that. I do not see how she could. In a way, I owe her almost everything. Philip, you would never have married the woman I was three years ago."

"Don't take your oath upon that," he said lightly.

"But you would not, and you ought not."

"There is a counterpart to that. I am sure you would not have married the man I was three years ago."

At that Lois laid down her face again for a moment on his breast.

"I had a pretty hard quarter of an hour in a sleigh with you once!" she said.

Philip's answer was again wordless.

"But about Mrs. Barclay?" said Lois, recovering herself.

"Are you one of the few women who can keep to the point?" said he, laughing.

"What can we do for her?"

"What would you like to do for her?"

"Oh-- Make her happy!"

"And to that end--?"

Lois lifted her face and looked into Mr. Dillwyn's as if she would search out something there. The frank n.o.bleness which belonged to it was encouraging, and yet she did not speak.

"Shall we ask her to make her home with us?"

"O Philip!" said Lois, with her face all illuminated,--"would you like it?"

"I owe her much more than you do. And, love, I like what you like."

"Would she come?"

"If she could resist you and me together, she would be harder than I think her."

"I love her very much," said Lois thoughtfully, "and I think she loves me. And if she will come--I am almost sure we _can_ make her happy."

"We will try, darling."

"And these other people--we need not meet them at Zermatt, need we?"

"We will find it not convenient."

Neither at Zermatt nor anywhere else in Switzerland did the friends again join company. Afterwards, when both parties had returned to their own country, it was impossible but that encounters should now and then take place. But whenever and wherever they happened, Tom made them as short as his wife would let him. And as long as he lives, he will never see Mrs. Philip Dillwyn without a clouding of his face and a very evident discomposure of his gay and not specially profound nature. It has tenacity somewhere, and has received at least one thing which it will never lose.